Steering rack and pinion assemblies can have up to 13 mm free play detected at the steering wheel when rocked side to side observing the drivers front road wheel for movement. It is a subjective measurement and would need to be pretty bad to fail.
When the tester mentions drum sticks? I must assume she/he is referring to inner track rods. These rods have ball joints and the rods run through plain bearings which can fail in service and cause movement where there is normally none.
When this occurs you have a couple of options;
1/ Change the track rods, or
2/ Change the steering rack.
While it is rare at least for me, the bearings have not caused significant wear in my experience over the years but I’ve had a few that after renewing the track rods play/wear was still present.
My opinion, I’d go for option 2
