KINGSTON, Jamaica (CMC) – West Indies Twenty20 star, Andre Russell, was Tuesday ruled out of several major upcoming global tournaments after being slapped with a 12-month ban for an anti-doping whereabouts violation.
The 28-year-old globetrotting all-rounder missed three drugs tests back in 2015 after failing to report his whereabouts, and was penalised by the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission.
He had faced up to a two-year ban if found guilty of the violation but will now sit out the game until next January under the 12-month sanction, which takes immediate effect.
“What the panel was required to do was look at the evidence given and to find whether the complainant established the requisite standard of proof, and that standard of proof is that it must be to the comfortable satisfaction of the tribunal that there was a first filing failure,” chairman Hugh Faulkner said afterward.
“And we found from the evidence that there was a first filing failure for the period January 1, 2015 to March 31, 2015.”
He continued: “Again, using the standard of proof that we had enunciated, again to the comfortable satisfaction of the tribunal, we found that there was a filing failure – a failure to find whereabouts information – for the period 1 July 2015 to 30 September 2015, and then the third filing failure would have been for 1 July 2015 to 30 September 2015 but specifically, failure to provide the explanation required by the anti-doping rules for why you are late with the whereabouts filing.
“Now the rules require that they must be three missed tests and that three missed tests happen within a 12-month period and we found that was the case.
More in today’s Daily Observer.