AMID the quick-fire excitement of the World Twenty/20 Championships and the disappointment at the West Indies’ exit short of the semi-finals comes the pleasant news that the two-year suspension of Mr Marlon Samuels is now at an end.

Readers will recall that Mr Samuels, considered among the most naturally talented of West Indian batsmen to come to the fore in the last 20 years, was banned by world cricket’s governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC), in 2008 for allegedly violating ICC rules of conduct. He was accused of “receiving money, benefit or other reward which could bring him or the game of cricket into disrepute”.

To summarise, police in Nagpur, India made allegations based on a tape-recorded telephone conversation that Mr Samuels had passed on information pertaining to a game involving the West Indies to an Indian businessman said to be a bookie. They charged that Mr Samuels benefitted by collecting money from the businessman, a Mr Mukesh Kochchar.

Mr Samuels was punished despite consistent and vehement denials that he had done wrong. He has insisted that while he was on friendly terms with Mr Kochchar, he never knowingly did anything that would have been in breach of the ICC code.

He claimed that his conversation with the businessman was harmless and that while he accepted the equivalent of US$1,238 to pay a hotel bill it was not intended as payment for anything but simply a small loan from a friend to cover a bill after his funds ran low.

The incident dramatised the extent to which international and professional cricket has changed. For up to 20 years ago the relationship as described between a private individual and an international cricketer would have warranted no attention whatsoever.

The match-fixing scandals of the 1990s radically altered everything. They spawned the regulations that Mr Samuels allegedly breached and the intrusiveness by Indian security officials that led to the allegations in the first place.

Of course, match-fixing and related skulduggery are not the only dangers that professional cricketers and other sportsmen and women must seek to avoid. There is the ongoing problem of doping in sport, for example. Just recently news broke of a Jamaican athlete having tested positive for a prohibited substance.

So it is then, that in this new world in which they live, professionals in sport have added responsibilities. It is no longer enough to train hard, perform at their very best and ensure their earnings are well-invested.

They must also be very careful regarding personal relationships and must even question the motives of those who seek to draw near. The dangers posed by prohibited substances mean sportsmen and women, like never before, must be ultra-cautions about their food, drink and nutritional supplements.

This newspaper believes that coaches, managers and others who seek to steer sportsmen and women should also have pivotal responsibilities in terms of the dangers spoken of here. At the very least they must ensure that their young charges understand the realities and how to deal with them.

And in relation to prohibited substances we empathise with the suggestion from the director general of the World Anti-doping Agency, Mr David Howman, that the coaches of athletes found guilty of doping offences should also be banned. At the very least, it seems to us, such people should be put under the microscope and be thoroughly investigated with a view to further action.