Not so football. How Giddins must wish he had turned his sporting talents to a football career. Football clubs know a grittier world of inner-city deprivation, where street urchins sniff glue in their heroes' strips, where drugs are viewed as a disease rather than a sin. And if someone suffers from a disease, they are treated as a patient rather than a sinner.

How else can one explain the vast difference between the punishments meted out on Giddins and those handed down to numerous narcotically challenged football players? How else can one explain the much greater incidence of drug abuse in football than in cricket?

When Arsenal's Paul Merson admitted to being a cocaine addict in November 1994, the Football Association ordered him into a rehabilitation clinic for six weeks. An enlightened response, some might say - it certainly gave Merson plenty of time to invest the vast sum he was paid for telling his story - and he was back in the side within three months.

Chris Armstrong, then with Crystal Palace, was banned for four whole matches after testing positive for cannabis in 1995.

The only penalty approaching that given to Giddins was that handed to Orient's Roger Stanislaus after he tested positive for cocaine. In his case, the doses found suggested that the drug had been ingested just hours before a match. It was not a matter of an unlucky leftover from a wild midweek party but evidence of deliberate performance-enhancement. His punishment was a year's suspension.

It has not been suggested that Giddins took cocaine with the aim of boosting his bowling. Even so, his stupidity has landed him a much greater blow than that delivered to Stanislaus.

So which is better? The milder FA approach or the hard-line Test and County Cricket Board stance? Social workers and doctors can argue until the cows come home. One thing is for sure, though. We will read of another drugged-up footballer long before we hear of another Giddins.

[...]