A blot on Rabada's record, but no more than that

Kagiso Rabada is no stranger to breaking records. In July 2016 he was the first player to claim six trophies at CSA's annual awards. He did so again two years later. Also in 2018, the ICC ranked him the world's best Test and ODI bowler for the whole year.

In July 2018, he became the youngest bowler to take 150 Test wickets. A month later, Wisden anointed him the best young player in the world. In October 2024, he took on the mantle of the fastest bowler to reach 300 Test wickets.

Here's a record Rabada will be relieved he does not hold: he isn't the first South Africa cricketer to fall foul of the anti-doping police. Robbie Frylinck, Vaughn van Jaarsveld, Rory Kleinveldt and Zubayr Hamza have been there and done that before him.

But a cursory glance at those names tells us the impact of Rabada's transgression is of a different order of magnitude. Between them, the non-Rabada players above earned 12 Test caps and 25 of the white-ball varieties at international level. None of them was seen on the game's most glittering stage: the IPL.

Rabada has played 70 Tests, 106 ODIs and 65 T20Is. And in 82 IPL games. In purely numerical terms, he alone is more than eight times the player they were combined. One Rabada is more than two Frylincks, Van Jaarsvelds, Kleinveldts and Hamzas.

Beyond the numbers, Rabada is a giant of the global game. His greatness - real greatness, not the marketing or influencer kind - has been secured before his 30th birthday. Thirty years from now, he will still be celebrated among the best fast bowlers to mark out a run-up, past, present and future.

Rabada is also, if you're South African, the embodiment of hope. Hope that we can still, despite all our dysfunction, produce world class exponents of their chosen profession. Hope that this generation of our compatriots looks at life with intelligence, commitment and dares to dream in ways their forebears could not. Hope that being black in a still racist society doesn't always kill these good things.

So what the bloody hell was Rabada thinking?

The South African Institute for Drug-Free Sport (SAIDS) said in a release on Monday that, after a SA20 match between Mumbai Indians Cape Town and Durban's Super Giants at Kingsmead on January 21, Rabada "tested positive for a substance of abuse". He was told this on April 1, by which time he had played two IPL games for Gujarat. He immediately returned home to deal with what the Titans called "an important personal matter".

Between April 3, when Rabada came home, and Saturday - when Netwerk24, an Afrikaans-language website, reported the messy truth - no amount of questioning of people who could or should have known why he was missing in action produced an answer that went beyond "personal reasons".

It was indeed personal. It was also in the public interest: millions of South Africa and Gujarat fans, who are the reason Rabada is able to make a living playing cricket, had a right to know why he wasn't playing. If you purport to represent people, you have a responsibility to explain your actions to them. Up to a point. Had there been a medical crisis involving Rabada or those close to him, that would be none of our business. Likewise if he was coming home to become a father, or to wed.

But this was none of those things. This was, as Rabada was quoted as saying in a statement issued by the South African Cricketers' Association on Sunday, because of an "adverse analytical finding for the use of a recreational drug".

The SAIDS release said: "A provisional suspension was imposed and Mr Rabada returned immediately to South Africa from India. The player accepted responsibility for the doping offence and honoured his provisional suspension. As per the South African anti-doping rules specifically pertaining to substances of abuse, the player was offered an opportunity to complete a substance abuse treatment programme. After Mr. Rabada satisfactorily completed two sessions of his treatment programme, his provisional suspension ended. The player has effectively served [a] one-month period of ineligibility and may now resume participation in sport."

Also on Saturday, CSA issued a release of exactly 100 words. Ninety-nine of them were irrelevant gumph. The exception was that they considered the situation "regrettable". Would CSA take the matter further by punishing Rabada more heavily than what will seem, to many, like SAIDS' gentle, farcical even, slap on the wrist?

"We're comfortable with the process and the outcome from SAIDS, so we won't be taking additional action." Pholetsi Moseki, CSA's chief executive, told Cricbuzz.

So that's that, then. Except it isn't. For one thing, the substance Rabada abused has not been disclosed. A footnote on the SAIDS release explains that, "Substances of abuse are substances that are identified as such because they are frequently abused in society outside of the context of sport. The following are designated substances of abuse: cocaine, heroin, MDMA/ecstasy, THC [tetrahydrocannabinol, which is found in cannabis]."

It seems Rabada ingested either cannabis or cocaine. The recreational use of cannabis has been legal in South Africa since 2018, and evidence of the drug's use is frequently smelled on many of the country's streets. It has become normalised. Not so cocaine, which is the party drug of choice of the affluent but remains a taboo. Depending on the amount of the drug involved, possession of cocaine could earn you a prison sentence of 25 years in South Africa. So while SAIDS give equal weight to using cannabis and cocaine, widely shared public mores do not.

For another thing, there's the Australians. Some of them, anyway. "It stinks," Tim Paine told SEN Radio on Monday. "I don't like this use around personal issues, and it is being used to hide stuff that isn't a personal issue. If you have a professional sportsman who's tested for recreational drugs during a tournament in which he is playing, that doesn't fall under personal issues for me. That falls under you having broken your contract. That is not a personal issue; that is something that is happening in your personal life.

"Taking drugs - recreational or performance-enhancing - is not a personal issue that can just be hidden for a month. A guy can be taken out the IPL, moved back to South Africa and we just let it slide under the rug. Then we will bring him back once he's already served his ban.

"Not only will he play against Australia in the WTC [final at Lord's next month], but he's available to be playing now in the IPL. Nobody knew about what he's taken, what he was given or who the organising body was that oversaw it.

"If he is going to take drugs and be caught doing it, I think people deserve to know what he's taken, how long he is being rubbed out for and who sanctioned the suspension. People need to be held to account for stuff like that."

Paine spoke before SAIDS issued their release, but there can be no doubt that it would not have taken the edge off his anger. This, mind, from the same man who resigned the Australia captaincy in disgrace in November 2021 when it emerged that he had sent sexually suggestive messages and a photograph of his penis to a female colleague in November 2017.

In his autobiography, "Tim Paine: The Price Paid", which was published in October 2022, he details how CA and his manager, James Henderson, weren't able to keep the story from being published. Presumably, Paine knew of and approved of their attempts to do so. Yet here he is bleating about the Rabada story not making the press for a month despite his own dirty laundry having spent four years unaired. Presumably, also, Paine considered his saga a personal issue. Others will differ - how could his family not have been impacted?

Paine might never have become Australia's captain had it not been for the Sandpapergate scandal of March 2018, when Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were done for ball-tampering during a Test against South Africa at Newlands.

The fallout was such that it seemed Australia itself would implode. The drama reached the highest office in the land when then prime minister Scott Morrison weighed in with his disapproval.

Darren Lehmann quit, in tears, as coach. Smith was summarily dumped as captain and banned for 12 months. So was Warner, the vice-captain, who was also prohibited from holding leadership positions for the rest of his career - a sanction that took more than six years to be lifted. Bancroft was barred for nine months and has played only two Tests since.

Those punishments were dished out by CA. The ICC banned Smith for the last match of the 2018 series and took his entire match fee, didn't so much as charge Warner, and fined Bancroft 75% of his wages.

South Africans were bemused. Why were the Aussies so exercised? It was as if their idea of their own Australianness had been destroyed by the unfortunate actions of three compatriots. Did they honestly believe their cricket team were the apex of what it meant to be Australian? Or that their team admits only those of inviolate character?

In South Africa, members of the national cricket team are no more nor less than that. They are not immaculate ambassadors or demigods who can do no wrong. They represent the country on the cricket ground, not in life. They are not more special than the rest of us except that they are able to play cricket better.

So the fact that, between October 2013 and November 2016, Faf du Plessis and Vernon Philander were guilty of ball-tampering three times between them did not send the nation into high dudgeon. Instead of introspecting themselves into a frenzy, South Africans hoped the ICC wouldn't take too dim a view. CSA defended the players all three times.

Similarly, while South Africans are disappointed that Rabada would be so irresponsible - or maybe that he was careless enough to be caught - they don't want him out of the game for longer than the month he has already served on the sidelines.

And especially not for using drugs recreationally. Rumours about exactly that have swirled around the Springboks for years, but they remain the darlings of their country. That they may indulge in illicit substances is exponentially less important to South Africans than the fact that they have won four World Cups.

The same goes for Rabada, even though he has yet to be part of a World Cup-winning team. That's another record he could break.