These steroids sure are taking a long time to wear off. It's been nearly a year now. He must have taken enough to kill about ten horses. Either that or he's been popping pills the whole time he's been away from cricket.
Either way, it is an impressive dosage, and if he can still play cricket after this, I can only applaud him. Only Shoaib could pull off a feat like that.
Bravo!
First, it's official. Shoaib and Asif are out, due to "injury." I put the word in quotation marks because I, like many, don't believe they are really injured. The conspiracy theory, for anyone who hasn't heard it yet, basically says that they are waiting till the nandrolone is completely flushed out of their bodies before they test. That way they might miss the World Cup, but won't have to deal with the prospect of a life ban.
Meanwhile, around 8000 miles away, New Zealand's Jacob Oram is grappling with a personal dilemma of his own. Having fractured his ring finger, Oram has been told by doctors that he will have to sit out the World Cup. But with himself and the rest of his team in tremendous form, Oram is so desperate to play that he is considering amputating the finger in question.
So here's a pair of players that are feigning injury to avoid having to take a urine sample for the duration of the World Cup. And there's another who is willing to injure himself just for the chance to play.
Here's a couple of men who have tried to patch up numerous problems by piling complication upon complication. And there's a man who knows how to cut to the chase. Literally.
Surely there's some middle ground somewhere.
Shoaib, Asif to Get Complete Transfusion from Razzaq's Blood
In order to remove all traces of Nandrolone from their urine in record time, the PCB has launched an incredible and impressive secret campaign. Adbul Razzaq, an important, yet replaceable, member of the squad, conveniently fractured his knee just minutes before leaving for the Caribbean. In an interview, he appeared completely befuddled as to how it happened. Chloroform, anyone?
Meanwhile, the rest of the squad, including the reserves, and even a few spectators, have already pissed in cups and been cleared by some drug testing authority in Malaysia. Wasn't the movie "Entrapment", starring Sean Connery, filmed in Malaysia? Didn't Connery play Bond for a while? Wasn't "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" the worst film ever made? Exactly. That's shady too.
Doctors in England will be performing the world's first (maybe 100th – who knows, first sounds better) complete blood transfusion and muscle sieving procedure to remove the controversial nandrolone from Asif and Shoaib's bodies. They will then use Abdul Razzaq's blood to fill them up again. It's dramatic, it's crazy, but it just might work. As long as they don't somehow infuse the two with Razzaq's somewhat insipid bowling ability, it sounds completely foolproof.
Of course, questions abound. Is the procedure safe? In particular, will Razzaq survive after donating every ounce of his blood? The answer is: who gives? We've got Azhar, haven't we? They're practically the same person.
If all goes well, Shoaib and Asif will be nandrolone-free and ready to roll when Pakistan take on the Windies in a couple of weeks. In fact, they might as well pop a few more doses while they're at it.
co-authored by Omar
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cross-posted at Omar Loves Cricket and cricket.bloggers.pk
In an article
For Pakistanis who are celebrating this decision, they should first cast a sombre glance at the cases of Meherullah Lassi and Faisal Karim. They are possibly Pakistan's best boxers, among the region's cream as well, and they have just been handed life bans by the Pakistan Boxing Federation for testing positive for use of cannabis.
I am amused. First, Meherullah Lassi is an awesome name. Second, cannabis is no reason to get kicked out of any sport. If you can be a pothead and still be "among the region's cream," then good for you. In fact, you might well be able to tackle other region's creams if you stopped getting high all the time.
I have watched events unfold in the Shoaib/Asif scandal with a fair bit of incredulity. For some reason I haven't posted about this yet. Maybe because I had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn't over. Well, lo and behold, it wasn't. In the latest development, they have both been completely acquitted of all charges brought against them. Which means the entire process of having a trial and serving out a harsh-but-fair punishment was one big sham.
Here's how it happened: PCB, an organization so fervent about maintaining its secrecy, so notorious for its lack of accountability or transparency, suddenly decided to sacrifice its two best bowlers just to showcase a strange new commitment to justice and integrity.
They rushed to judgment, and now the country looks like a bunch of bumbling idiots. They should have played it safer earlier. They should have either: (1) stuck to their time-honored traditions of secrecy and dealt with the matter behind closed doors; or (2) opened it to the world and had a proper trial - not one where the sentence was, as it appears, pre-determined, but a real and proper and final one.
What has happened is neither here nor there. And it is shameful. And it makes us look shady.
Of course, I'm not all gloom and doom about this. In fact, I'm quite conflicted. There's a big part of me that's thrilled they're back. No, not thrilled...relieved. Despite the team's recent 2-0 test victory against the Windies, there was no angle from which to see Pakistan lifting the World Cup. Now, at least such a chance is vaguely visible, if only through a powerful electron microscope.
So according to Cricinfo, one (admittedly weak) defense for Shoaib failing the drugs test is that he was taking Ventolin inhalers. Apparently Ventolin inhalers contain steroids.
Hmm...
I better not take any drug tests anytime soon.
Dear readers,
My heartfelt apologies for leaving you postless for so many days. Things are heating up with applications et al. Here, however, is a little article I just came across that I had to post about. So here ends my hiatus..
Apparently Canadian troops in Afghanistan are having a hard time getting through "almost impenetrable forests of 10-feet-high marijuana plants."
So they are wondering how to get rid of them.
"We tried burning them with white phosphorous -- it didn't work. We tried burning them with diesel -- it didn't work. The plants are so full of water right now ... that we simply couldn't burn them," he said.
Hmm.. I wonder what else they tried.
"A couple of brown plants on the edges of some of those (forests) did catch on fire. But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action," Hillier said dryly.
Hahahaha.. downwind indeed. I'll bet they sucked that shit up as far into their lungs as possible.
One soldier told him later: "Sir, three years ago before I joined the army, I never thought I'd say 'That damn marijuana'."
What a wonderful story.
Labels:
drugs
A little wikipediaing led me to this:
Humans have consumed caffeine since the Stone Age. Early peoples
found that chewing the seeds, bark, or leaves of certain plants had the
effects of easing fatigue, stimulating awareness, and elevating mood.
Only much later was it found that the effect of caffeine was increased
by steeping such plants in hot water. Many cultures have legends that
attribute the discovery of such plants to people living many thousands
of years ago.
The early history of coffee is obscure, but a popular myth traces its
discovery to Ethiopia, where Coffea arabica originates from.
According to this myth, a goatherder named Kaldi observed goats that
became elated and sleepless at night after browsing on coffee shrubs
and, upon trying the berries that the goats had been eating,
experienced the same vitality.
In 1587, Malaye Jaziri compiled a work tracing the history and legal
controversies of coffee, entitled "Umdat al safwa fi hill al-qahwa". In this
work, Jaziri recorded that one Sheikh, Jamal-al-Din al-Dhabhani, mufti
of Aden, was the first to adopt the use of coffee in 1454, and that in the
15th century the Sufis of Yemen routinely used coffee to stay awake
during prayers.
Towards the close of the 16th century, the use of coffee was recorded
by a European resident in Egypt, and about this time it came into
general use in the Near East. The appreciation of coffee as a beverage
in Europe, where it was first known as "Arabian wine," dates from the
17th century. During this time "coffee houses" were established, the
first being opened in Constantinople and Venice. In Britain, the first
coffee houses were opened in London in 1652, at St Michael's Alley,
Cornhill. They soon became popular throughout Western Europe, and
played a significant role in social relations in the 17th and 18th
centuries.
Labels:
drugs
By popular demand, here is The Story of Bulbar in it's original form.
"bulbar was a choot... he had five fingers and no friends... or was it no fingers and five friends... that i do not know.... smiley face....ever since i met bulbar he was a misguided foool... not to be harsh but hey cho\\oot thats the museum face.... not bulbar!!! he screamed above the noise of the alligators... didn';t you see, it was bulbar all along??? yeah, i guess i knew all along, said the guy.... why? not todayyy//... bulbar... ohhooooo... like a song my choot....bulbar..... not bad yaaar ... said the friend of bulbar...... i haunt you... bit like the weezer song... bulbaaaaaaaaar jinsenf...\\\\feff.... said bulbar... sorry kayge... you said bulbar... i said whispering chinese... not chinese qwhispers... why??? bulbar said so that ss why.... not bulbar again!!! so i sett;ed it with the courts.... wait for bulbar.... hes a star...on the car.... debate for bulbar when the sun is in in the stars bum bum!!!! waking up like bul;bar he said muthafucka waitup its bulbar bul;bar bulabr
pepsi pepsi pepsi mujhe lu\oge bolein...; hi peppsi hello bulbar loge bolian i aint an actor im not a star and i dont even have my own car./
...im nnooooooooooooooot bulbaaaaaaaaar tonight
im nottttttt bulbarrrrrrrrrr agaiiiiiinnn toooo naaaaiiightt...bulbarr
bulbar is in my car i told bulbar just sleeeeppp i ate a bar
i had a cigar
bulbar but now i sleeeeieieieieieieieeeeep
dhun dhun"
--- 12 Sep 05
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