Paul Lewis: Steroids make an unwelcome intrusion

Cricket's first reported brush with steroids, in the alleged use of nandrolone by Pakistani bowlers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammed Asif, has been greeted by some as the beginning of the end for the "gentlemen's game".

The hand-wringing over the evil spectre of drugs invading the gentle game, previously synonymous with intake no more nefarious than mugs of tea and watercress sandwiches, is misplaced. For a start, cricket was never a gentleman's game; even a shallow look into its history will see that supposedly revered figures like W.G. Grace, the so-called father of cricket, had as much of an eye for the money and the main chance as for any gentlemen's code of conduct.

Cricket has certainly not been gentlemanly since bodyline, sledging, false appealing, Ian Botham, Hansie Cronje, Shane Warne, match-fixing and a small army of cricketers who have been caught after indulging in recreational drugs, as opposed to the performance-enhancing variety.

This is the first time steroids have cropped up, at least since little-known Australian cricketer Duncan Spencer was tipped out for 18 months when he made a comeback in 2001 after retiring from the game. Spencer did not expect to play cricket again, took nandrolone to protect his back in his work as a labourer (he'd had four back operations), was surprisingly asked to turn out in state cricket, after which he was drug tested and discovered that the drug had remained in his system longer than anticipated.

What remains now is to see how cricket punishes Akhtar and Asif if their B samples are also found to be positive. That there is some nervousness about the outcome was seen in the veiled threat from ICC chief Malcolm Speed, saying the ICC would step in if it felt the Pakistani punishment was too lenient. In other words, if Shoaib and Asif are found guilty, the punishment needs to be seen to be more than the equivalent of being beaten with a soggy ant.

Fair enough. Cricket needs to be seen to taking a firm hand over drugs. Shane Warne was banned for a year when his use of a diuretic went into cricketing folklore. He hilariously revealed his mum had given it to him so he could lose weight (those chants of 'who ate all the pies' really do work, then).

WADA (the World Anti-Doping Agency), to whose tough rules cricket has just signed up, prescribe a ban of up to two years; many are betting that Shoaib and Asif get banned just enough so they can play in the World Cup next March and April.

However, while any use of a steroid or even recreational drugs is grounds enough to disqualify sportspeople automatically, the appearance of steroids in cricket does raise some potentially mitigating issues. We can leave aside, for the moment, the tedious defence of "not knowingly taking" and the stream of character references and physician's opinions (herbal medicines have been suggested as a source of the steroid) that accompany any allegations of drugs cheating.

The body of opinion seems to be that the two Pakistan quicks - if they indeed did take nandrolone - were probably trying to recover from injury. Asif has an elbow injury and Shoaib a stress fracture and other ailments. Steroids like nandrolone accelerate the healing process as well as build extra muscle and bulk - extra power.

More bulk and muscle do not necessarily mean a faster bowler. Lance Cairns was hugely powerful but his front-on delivery meant he did not bowl particularly fast. West Indies paceman Michael Holding was tall, but reedily built, and they didn't call him 'the whispering death' for nothing. Fast bowling is more about technique, style, the ability to move the ball and control than it is about muscle power.

British sports professor Ron Maughan says nandrolone could add a bit of pace. But Shoaib is already among the fastest in the world and the risk/reward equation there seems wrong. Maughan's research shows nandrolone is present in legal dietary supplements also used to grow muscle and bulk up - but which can contain enough traces of nandrolone to trigger a positive test.

However, in cricket as in life, ignorance of the law is no loophole. The offence is to have a positive sample. Explanations as to how it got there are inevitably interesting (even amusing) but, in the complex world of pharmaceuticals and biology, useless. It is virtually impossible to detect the source of such a substance - all science can tell us is that it is there; not how it got there.

So cricket is on the horns of a dilemma, with only two certainties - they won't be able to pin this one on Darrell Hair; and, even if we tipped two truckloads of nandrolone into Shane Bond, he'd probably still pull up lame by day four.