Let’s start with the good news, Kagiso Rabada, quite possibly South Africa’s greatest quick of all-time, has been cleared to play for the Proteas in the final of June’s World Test Championship.
Rabada, who earlier this year flew home from the IPL citing personal reasons, hasn’t played since the Gujarat Titans’ opening two games of the tournament. It turns out those ‘personal reasons’ were a ban for illegal drug use.
While it is pleasing that Rabada will be available to play for South Africa; and while it is pleasing that he was bust for having a good time rather than for using performance enhancing substances, it still feels like the situation has been very badly dealt with.
In sport there are rules and codes of conduct that players are expected to follow. These rules apply at all levels of elite sport and Rabada would be well versed with the do’s and don’ts involved in the use of any sort of pharmaceutical product.
The reason this situation feels wrong is the lack of transparency that’s been involved. Rabada’s suspension is over and by all accounts he is back in India and available to play again for the Titans. Only now, long after the ‘crime’, long after the positive result and long after whatever hearing took place do we find out some of the details.
While we hope that everything is above board, we shouldn’t have to hope. We should know unequivocally all the details surrounding the situation so that at no point does it feel like a cover-up.
Rabada is an icon and a hero to many. Many of his fans are young and impressionable. But that’s no reason to keep this incident quiet. Now that the situation has emerged into the open Rabada has apologized.
“I am deeply sorry to all those I have let down. I will never take the privilege of playing cricket for granted,” he said, but that should surely have been part of his testimony at a hearing. Remorse is a good thing and will undoubtedly have been favourably looked on.
We still don’t know what happened? Did he inhale second-hand smoke at a Rastafarian party?
Did a prankster slip a magic-mushroom into the risotto? Whatever the case, we live in a society that has become a lot more open-minded since Daryl Cullinan ‘told on’ Herschelle Gibbs and his mates in the West Indies in 2001.
If Rabada has partaken of a recreational drug he is not going to be judged harshly. But let it be acknowledged what has happened so that we can all move on with clear consciences and no doubts.
Rabada says he won’t let this event define him. That is good. He is far too good a player to let a minor indiscretion soil an outstanding career and set of statistics. But he can only move forward if there is full transparency. It doesn’t feel like we are quite there yet.
