Meanwhile, at the cricket

As the cycling world falls into its umpteenth doping crisis this year, month, day, err, hour, fuelled by fresh allegations over the advice that banned doctor Michele Ferrari did or didn’t give to nearly 40 cyclists a few moons ago, Michael Clarke, Australia’s cricket captain was injected with, well who knows what exactly, 'legally" to miraculously recover from a innings-ending back injury, score a hundred, and be an all-out hero.

'Course, old Clarkey was doing all he could do, under the rules governing cricket to be fit. But, as pointed out by Garmin-Sharp professional Nathan Haas on twitter; there's a bizarre hypocrisy inherent in sport when legal injections that quite literally bring people back from the dead (okay, more figuratively), are allowed, and lauded, and others, oh, let's say Ben Hill, are read the riot act for mistakenly taking a low-grade supplement.

Which isn't to say that the revelations coming out of Padua aren't shocking - they are - but to bring attention to the way, as a society, we just blindly accept some performance enhancers as legitimate aids, and deny others. If you ask me, it can, and often does, seem a little arbitrary. Why do we draw a line in the sand in our minds, that differentiates between where legitimate performance enhancement ends, and cheating begins, and how?

Anyway, this is all getting a little philosophical, and some smartarse will probably tell me, it's cheating if it's in breach of the World Anti-Doping Code. Yes. Fine. But, next time you come down like a ton of bricks on someone, for some random infraction, take a moment to pause, and to think about what indeed you accept, unwittingly in other sports, all the time.

Just a thought. Anyway, back to the cricket. I wonder if Clarkey can get a hundred in the second innings too? What a trooper...

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