In a meeting to take a decision about the mounting pressure from the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA), the Supreme court appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) has decided that the current anti-doping system is apt and top Indian cricketers don’t need to sign the ‘whereabouts clause’.

Speaking to Cricketnext, a senior BCCI official anonymously said that the CoA and the BCCI top officials met in Mumbai on Thursday night and decided that the current anti-doping rules in place at various levels are competent enough for the players.

Talking to CricketNext, a senior BCCI official said, “The COA met on Thursday night and did a detailed study of the anti-doping process in place in the BCCI and the feeling is that there is no need to come under NADA as there is provision already for tests at different stages in domestic cricket and when it comes to international cricket, the BCCI is already compliant with WADA and tests are conducted so there is nothing extra that comes with aligning with NADA.”

After being asked about the reason why the players do not wish to come under NADA, the official replied, “Firstly we already have a full-proof process in place and coming under NADA would mean signing the whereabouts clause and the players aren’t too comfortable with the idea of disclosing their location. It is an infringement on their privacy and the BCCI does not see the need to force the players to change their stance as we have our own system where tests are conducted even during Ranji games. Show us an area where we have been caught napping and we will change our stance and convince the players too.”

Whereabouts are information provided by a limited number of top athletes about their location to the International Sports Federation (IF) or National Anti-Doping Organization (NADA in this case), which include them in their respective registered testing pool as part of these top athletes’ anti-doping duties.