Rohit Sharma Most Tested Indian Cricketer By NADA Officials For Doping; Virat Kohli Not Tested In Last Two Years: Report

Athletics was one sport which witnessed the highest number of tests but cricket saw less than 2 per cent of the total number of tests conducted.

Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma of India react during India training prior to the ICC World Test Championship Final 2023 at The Oval on June 05, 2023 in London, England. ( Image Source :Getty Images )

Recent data reveals that not enough doping tests have been conducted on India's athletes in the last two years- 2021 and 2022. While cricket was one sport which finally came under the jurisdiction of the government-run National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) in 2019 with cricketers also now being tested by NADA which meant that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) like other sports federations had to abide by the guidelines, only 114 tests were conducted on cricketers in the last two years.

A report carried by the Indian Express cites information obtained under the Right to Information (RTI) Act of 2005. As per the data which has been provided, a total of 5,961 tests were conducted in 2021 and 2022 but just 1.91 per cent out of these tests happened on cricketers. Athletics was one sport which witnessed the highest number of tests, 1,717, among all sports in the country.



The report also suggests that India captain Rohit Sharma has been the most tested Indian cricketers with officials visiting him six times. Seven players which include Cheteshwar Pujara, Suryakumar Yadav among others were tested just once while Virat Kohli was not even tested for a single time during the last two years.

Virat Kohli not the only contracted men's cricketer not to be tested

It is pertinent to note that Kohli isn't the only contracted men's cricketer who was not tested. In fact, while 25 men's cricketers have been handed a central contract by the Indian cricket board, 12 of them have not been tested during this period. Hardik Pandya, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, Umesh Yadav, Shardul Thakur, Arshdeep Singh, Shreyas Iyer, Deepak Hooda, Sanju Samson, Srikar Bharat, and Washington Sundar are names that find themselves among those who haven't been tasted even once.

When it comes to women cricketers though every contracted member has been tested with Harmanpreet Kaur and Smriti Mandhana being the most tested female cricketers with three tests each. The data does not suggest any kind of misconduct by Indian cricketers but it adds weightage to the claims made by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) that India wasn't doing enough to catch the wrong doers.