While the Indian cricket team trying to shrug off allegations of druguse by some of its members and retaining focus on the Coca Cola Cuptri-series final against West Indies on Saturday, physio Andrew Leipushas come up strongly in defence of his side.Leipus termed the allegations “laughable” and said he felt extremelylet down by the story.A news magazine last week quoted former Indian cricketer and coachAnshuman Gaekwad alleging certain players took performance-enhancingdrugs. Gaekwad had subsequently denied the comments attributed to him.”Personally it puts me in a bad light. All the hard work that I havedone to get the players fitter and better has been washed away withthis allegation,” Leipus said. He categorically stated he had “neverinjected a player except when it is for acupuncture” and denied evergiving a steroid to any Indian player.On the charge that he had imported some “stuff” from Australia for theplayers, the physio retorted, “It is myoplex, a nutritional powder,and it is secured from South Africa and not Australia. Also, it is nota steroid.”Steroids help people in the gym enormously. If you are in to heavyweight training, steroids will help you. But our guys, when in thegym, do not train so hard. Their training is not really intensive.Whoever has done the story has little or no knowledge of thedifference between diet supplements and steroids”, he said.”Fingers have been pointed at us,” said a senior cricketer oncondition of anonymity. “But nobody cared to remember that quite a fewIndian cricketers, like Javagal Srinath, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble,Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar, have played county cricket inrecent past where drug regulations are in place and they have alsobeen repeatedly tested.”The England and Wales Cricket Board and the Australian Cricket Boardare the only two national cricket bodies where drug regulations areenforced and random tests are carried out on cricketers. However,these laws are applied at the first class level and not in theinternational arena.Sunil Gavaskar, who heads the cricket committee of the InternationalCricket Council, says the issue does not fall under the jurisdictionof his unit.”We handle only the technical matters of the game internationally,though I did broach this subject with the chief executive (MalcolmGray) at the executive meeting of the body in Nairobi last October andwork on it is underway,” he said.ICC’s Anti-corruption unit chief Sir Paul Condon also mentioned theallegations of baggage and equipment on tours being used to facilitatemovement of illicit drugs.Zimbabwe batsman Andy Flower said it was time the respective cricketboards had a sound drug policy in place. “If everyone feels the gameis clean, why not put in place a sound drug policy to avoid anyrumours gaining ground”.Craig Smith, the long-serving physiotherapist of the South Africanteam, termed the allegations in the magazine as outlandish and farfetched.”A cricketer is not like a sprinter, whose success depends largely onpower. There are so many variables in a game of cricket and a batsmanrelies on technique and timing and a bowler on technique and rhythm.Those are not things you can find in a bottle. A lot of the topplayers take nutritional supplements, such as carbohydrates andproteins, or Creatine, which is legal and advisable, but to say thereis widespread use of steroids, beta-blockers or amphetamines is justan attempt at sensationalising the issue.”It is not the first time though that suggestions have been made on theusage of drugs by Indian cricketers. During the Commonwealth Games inKuala Lumpur in 1998, some leading Indian bowlers were not included inthe team because they were taking cortisone injections to ease bodypains. Cortisone is a taboo as per the International OlympicCommittee’s medical commission.ICC spokesman Mark Harrison said cricket bodies around the world willsoon be forced to submit players to stern drug testing, most certainlyby the 2003 World Cup. The ICC would have, by then, recognised whichdrugs are illegal and which are only energisers, he said.