Newspapers reported last week of an U-19 player registered with DDCA to be overage by—hold your breath— 5 years! Scrutiny of multiple school certificates revealed he was actually 23 playing against those between 16+ and 19 years of age. The mind boggles at the temerity of those in charge of this young man: his guardians (I would assume), but even more his coach(es), obviously planned and conspired to get past the standard check posts to give him unfair advantage when playing age group tournaments.
Yet, what’s even more worrying is that such cases are not as rare as may be imagined. In 2019 itself the BCCI has banned 101 players—boys and girls—for age fudging, suggesting that the problem is not some seasonal passing flu, but has become an epidemic.
What has also come to light is that all kinds of ruses and shenanigans are being deployed to beat the system: fudged birth and school certificates, getting the ward registered in multiple schools to keep lowering the age, using ‘influence’ with state association officials, selectors et al.
Former India captain Rahul Dravid had identified and spelt out the problem soon after retirement and has persistently raised this at different forums since. In the Pataudi Lecture he gave in December 2015, Dravid was scathing, saying the “scourge of age fudging was no less than fixing and corruption”.
Why was Dravid so het up? Does a few years here or there make such a huge difference?
It does. Till a certain level of physical maturity has been achieved, even 2-3 years can make a huge difference to sporting ability and prowess. A boy who is 16 is unlikely to be as strong as a young man of 20-plus, and therefore is at a distinct disadvantage when they compete against each other.
This becomes even more pronounced in lower age groups. A 13-14 year old, whose bones and muscles are not fully formed, will be no match for a 17-18-year old who is almost a man. It’s doomed to be a no-contest, and can have grave consequences in several ways.
For one, such a mismatch can stymie the chances of a genuinely talented 12-14 year-old. Even with far superior skills is likely to be blown away by the power of a 17-18-year-old and this could make him lose confidence in his own ability.
Worse, he could get so badly destroyed in the mind that he might give up on the sport entirely. In his place, you would get a player who may soon be exposed when he meets players of similar physical maturity. It’s a double whammy.
Age fudging is not a new issue in Indian cricket. In 40 years of writing on the sport, I can think of several cases who got by at the junior level with a fudge and a wink. But with cricket becoming so richly rewarding—in terms of fame and money—age fudging seems to be endemic.
The inflection point has been what I called the ‘Tendulkar Syndrome’. Sachin Tendulkar’s monumental success over a 25-year first class class career—starting as a prodigious 15-year-old—caused a paradigm shift in the thinking of young hopefuls, their mums and dads and coaches.
Before Tendulkar, kids were admonished by parents for spending so much time in maidans. Since he became an iconic figure at 16, young mums and dads today beseech coaches to make their children “into a Tendulkar’’, asap, and even if it comes at high cost as long as opportunities come swiftly.
In the last decade or so, the IPL has become a major seduction for budding players, and perhaps even more for their starry-eyed, often hubris-laden guardian and coaches who are not averse to bending the system if it helps them fast track their ward’s career.
Such a situation has grave consequences going ahead and I’ll go back to Dravid again to voice this for having been in charge of under-19 and other youngsters in the past few years, he seems to be even more disturbed. In September—when three players, including one who is currently in first class cricket were found overage—Dravid raised the ante against age fudging by likening it to an “erosion of culture’’.
To view this only in the cricketing sense is restrictive and short-sighted. It holds out a warning to us as a society and country.
