This is a blessing in disguise for Russell...sit out the year, give his knee time to recover, and come back better next year.
This is worth a read....
http://www.firstpost.com/sports/doping- ... 84596.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
'Kusal Perera has been the victim of a real injustice. On 6 December of 2015, he was contacted by the International Cricket Council (ICC) to inform him that an out of competition drugs test had been positive for a banned substance. He was provisionally suspended having been found to have a steroid known as 19-Norandrostenedione in both his A and B urine samples....Cricket has some issues with the testing of performance enhancing drugs and the authorities have been more reticent about full involvement in the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) code on out of competition testing. The colossal error in Perera's case further undermines their efforts to appear to be making headway on the issue. Under the WADA guidelines, elite athletes need to declare their whereabouts for one hour a day over the coming three months so that they can be tested when they are not competing. When the ICC first announced that it would introduce a whereabouts clause to its anti-doping code in 2009, there was strong resistance from the BCCI and top Indian players who were concerned that this level of information would present a security risk to them. This is not quite the case today, and instead there is a watered down version of the whereabouts requirements that some, but not all, international players are subject to. Out of competition testing is considered so important because anyone who is using performance enhancing drugs will look to cut down on their usage as dates of competition become closer as they know that the authorities will be much more vigilant. If you are going to catch people it will be when they aren’t expecting to be tested, not when they are well aware that it will happen. Currently, there are two pools of players that have to give their whereabouts to the ICC, the first is the National Player Pool (NPP) which is 11 male players made up of the wicketkeeper that has played the most ODIs, the five top ranked ODI batsmen and the five top ranked ODI bowlers. This isn’t for every cricketing nation, or even every full member nation, just the top eight ranked teams at that time. The second pool is the International Registered Testing Pool (IRTP) which is made up of any player that has “committed and anti-doping rule violation” and those which are in the NPP and have not played in the last three months. All of this means that around 100 cricketers are subject to out of competition testing for performance enhancing drugs but there is still some debate as to whether the BCCI is fully compliant with this. The ICC insisted in January of this year that the BCCI complied with the NPP and IRTP requirements and confirmed that some 1250 out of competition tests have been carried out thus far. The issue is less the number of tests and more the number of players that are tested. When you consider that 553 men have played ODI cricket in the last three years, it is far from comprehensive coverage by out of competition testing for those that are playing the game at the highest level. Below the ICC level it is up to the individual boards to carry out testing domestically. In England the board have included all England representatives and anyone who plays for a county first XI, second XI or academy in the testing pool. The same is not true of other boards where there is no fixed pools for domestic cricketers.'
So, you have places like Jamaica, England, Australia and New Zealand, who have a track and field athletics heritage, and therefore their out-of-competition drug-testing is much better than it is in Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan and some of the Eastern Caribbean islands. And it seems that there is no urgency from the ICC to resolve this state of affairs. Here's a simplified explanation of Russell's drug ban....
http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/ ... 80860.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
