Dire need to keep age fraud under check Silly Point
The lovely game of cricket has had it’s issues over a period of time. Fudging age, particularly in the Asian subcontinent, has been a primary one which has not got the necessary treatment it deserves from Boards that govern the game in countries therein.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced an amnesty scheme for young cricketers to own up any ‘fudging’ they may have committed if they want to play age-group cricket at a higher level.
The malaise of tampering with age has been going on for years in India and many ‘illegals’ have gone scot free, playing with cricketers much younger to them.
They have taken advantage of having strength over talent to bulldoze their way in school and age-group games creating a playing field that was completely lop sided, favouring teams that fielded older boys.
BCCI’s edict of offering amnesty is welcome in the sense it will now ensure parity in age-group tournaments where offenders who continue to play illegally will face a two-year ban. The ban will ensure that they will not be allowed to play in any agegroup tournaments, local and national, effectively taking away the best of the formative years of their careers.
Being ineligible to play for two seasons is a harsh punishment for youngsters and the BCCI has (over the past few years) been docking the guilty for meddling with age. Last year saw them, and domestic associations, punish more than 200 cricketers including one who had represented India Under19 in the victorious 2018 World Cup.
Tinkering with age is an old issue that has plagued Indian cricket over the years. As a 16-year old boy, playing the Cooch Behar Trophy, which was an inter-state schools tournament in those days, I was shocked to see sweets being distributed by the captain of another state school team to celebrate the birth of his son. The incident that happened 47 years ago still rankles in my mind.
Most school cricketers in Mumbai (then Bombay) were aware that they had to compete with ‘almost adults’ who were masquerading as kids.
While cases, in those days, happened they were not as rampant as what we have been seeing recently. Elder, ineligible, players get more opportunities to represent state age-group teams irrespective of real skills, leaving genuine cricketers in the lurch. Not being in the state squads eventually forces talented youngsters give up the game with parents insisting on spending time on the children education.
The biggest problem faced by genuine coaches is to persuade parents to let their talented children continue to play the game. Reputed coach, Dinesh Lad, who nurtured young talent like Rohit Sharma, Shardul Thakur and his son Siddesh said that the biggest challenge in his 25years of coaching at the school level comes from convincing parents.
“I always tell parents that talented youngsters should continue to play at the Under-14 and Under-16 levels to develop their skills for the future and not worry about state team selections. Real talent like Sachin Tendulkar and Rohit Sharma will always find their way irrespective of the inequality,” he confided.
Why then has this malaise been allow to take rampant proportions over the years? The answer lies in career prospects that cricket offers. Earlier it was jobs that talented cricketers got which ensured stability, now parents look at the prospect of a much bigger and better opportunity of their wards likely to be picked for the Indian Premier League (IPL) and get them set for life. Today, playing in the IPL is a more immediate goal set for youngsters than playing for the state or the country, unlike in the past.
BCCI’s amnesty scheme is a fabulous move, one that will give errant youngsters an opportunity to get back into the scheme of things and not put obstacles for their immediate future. If one takes a holistic view of the age tampering issue the primary blame lies with indecorous coaches who get the youngsters (and their gullible parents) to agree to fake certificates that fuddle the age of the cricketer.
The unequal contests eventually lead to ruin with this form of shortterm cheating tearing into the fabric of the game. Along with the Board of Ccontrol for Cricket in India, many state associations have started to focus on this corruption which is as bad, if not worse, than match fixing and throwing the game.
Hopefully, the amnesty scheme will deter youngsters from taking such illegal shortcuts. To ensure a level playing field, the state associations must also censure errant coaches (the main culprits) with life time bans if any of their wards are found guilty in the future.