Doping cases in sport have, sad to say, become all too common in recent times.

Nevertheless, it remains rare that the top-ranked athlete in the world in any given sport tests positive but that is exactly what happened last year to Lee Chong Wei, Malaysia's world No.1 men's singles badminton player.

While a badminton story may not be cause to hold the front pages in Britain, in Asia, Chong Wei's aberrant behaviour dominated the headlines.

In his home country, Chong Wei is a superstar of David Beckham proportions; the 32 year-old cannot walk the streets unhindered and is so revered that even the King and Queen attended his wedding. Malaysia's reaction to his positive doping test was similar in magnitude to the uproar that would be heard in Britain were Andy Murray to fail a drugs test.

A two-year ban was on the cards for Chong Wei when he tested positive for the anti-inflammatory drug dexamethasone during the world championships last August. To suggest Chong Wei's positive test was a blow to the sport is an understatement; the Malaysian won Olympic silver in both 2008 and 2012 and has held the top-ranked position for almost 300 weeks. The reputation of badminton was, in one fell swoop, badly damaged.

But one week ago, Chong Wei received encouraging news. After a hearing with badminton's governing body, the BWF, it was announced that the player would only be banned for eight months, with the ban backdated to when he ceased competing - immediately after his positive test meaning he was free to resume competing from the 1st May.

The BWF said its decision was based on their opinion that "this is not a case of doping with intent to cheat," also noting that Chong Wei had been negligent, but with the degree of negligence being "rather light" because he did not realise he had ingested dexamethasone. The Malaysian player said that he had accepted the pills, a similar variety of which he had taken since he was a teenager, from the wife of a "very influential person."

Even judging Chong Wei generously, this is an anomalous defence. Every athlete in the world, particularly those at the top, know implicitly the strict liability rule wherein each individual is responsible for what is in their system. Whatever is found in your body is your problem, nobody else's. Every athlete knows that ignorance is an insufficient excuse.

Except that, in this instance, it has worked for Chong Wei. His eight-month backdated ban has given him a reprieve and a chance to finally win that elusive Olympic gold next year in Rio, an opportunity which would have been denied to him had a two-year ban been imposed. It is an almighty escape but one which does nothing for the perception of badminton as a sport. Has Chong Wei's eminent standing within the game helped his cause? It seems so.

Mohd Shah Firdaus Sahrom, a twenty year-old Malaysian cyclist, is fighting an 18-month ban after the same anti-inflammatory drug dexamethasone that Chong Wei tested positive for was found in his system at the Asian Championships a year ago. Shah's hearing as he tries to overturn his ban, is at the Malaysian National Cycling Federation tomorrow. It remains to be seen whether his treatment will be quite so forgiving as was Chong Wei's.

What makes Chong Wei's case quite so intriguing is that it demonstrates just how short-sighted governing bodies can be.

The BWF, just as with every world governing body, is charged with both promoting the sport and simultaneously endeavouring to keep it free of doping. It is a paradox of quite alarming proportions.

Clearly, the world governing body does not want its top player and one of the most marketable figures in the game to be banned for doping. It could cause potentially irreparable damage to the reputation of the sport. So the best way to resolve this mess is to give Chong Wei a lenient sentence, allow him back for the start of the year-long Olympic qualifying campaign and we can all forget it and move on, can't we?

Clearly Shah's reputation holds less clout - he is a relative nobody in the world of cycling so an 18 month ban for the same offence as Chong Wei's is no skin off anyone's nose, no one will even notice that Shah's missing . . .

One only has to look at the mess that the UCI, cycling's governing body, got itself into when it deemed Lance Armstrong to be bigger than the sport. There were multiple allegations that the UCI covered up the American's doping misdemeanours for fear of damaging its precious sport. Similarly, in the 1990s, the ATP allegedly covered up a positive test by Andre Agassi to protect the reputation of both tennis and the player.

This is a dangerous road to go down though. Sport will only thrive if there is trust and by favouring one individual above the integrity of the sport itself, the risk of decimating sport's credibility is very real indeed.