Kusal Perera cleared of doping charges

Kusal Perera, the Sri Lanka wicketkeeper-batsman, is free to resume playing cricket with immediate effect after the ICC lifted the provisional suspension imposed on him for doping. The ICC said there was no decisive evidence that Perera, who was suspended in December 2015, had used performance-enhancing substances after a detailed examination of the Qatar-based testing facility’s finding 19-Norandrostenedione – the banned substance – in Perera’s sample.

The withdrawal is the result of a sustained challenge from Perera’s legal team, who according to the ICC “in a recent letter”, had “suggested for the first time that the Qatar laboratory might have misidentified impurities in the samples as 19-Norandrostenedione, given the very low concentrations of that substance found in the samples”.

In response, the ICC said it hired an independent expert to review all of the Qatar laboratory’s findings. Though the expert concluded the lab had correctly identified the substance in the samples, the expert’s view was that the lab’s finding was not sustainable. This was because, “for various scientific and technical reasons, it could not be ruled out that the 19-Norandrostenedione was produced naturally in the player’s body and/or formed in the samples after the player provided them.”

The ICC then relayed these concerns to the lab, which has now “withdrawn the Adverse Analytical Finding and is instead reporting an Atypical Finding.” The lab said no further testing on Perera’s samples were warranted, but did recommend “the monitoring of the player’s steroid profile moving forward”.

Essentially, the case has been struck …

continue reading in source www.espncricinfo.com

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