BCCI announces two-year ban for age fraud

The Board of Control for Cricket in India on November 27, 2018 announced that a cricketer guilty of age fraud will be barred from all its recognised tournaments for a period of two years.

The cricketing body said in a statement, “The BCCI has a zero-tolerance policy for age fraud in sport and has taken strict action against cricketers found guilty of manipulating their date of birth certificates while registering for BCCI tournaments.”

Key Highlights

• The BCCI statement relayed that from the 2018-19 season, any cricketer who is found guilty of tampering his or her date of birth will be disqualified and barred from participating in any BCCI tournament for a period of 2 years i.e. 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons.

• Under the new rules, the board will clamp down on cricketers found guilty of tampering with their date of birth certificates

• According to the earlier rules, a cricketer guilty of age fraud had to face a ban for a period of one year.

• In September 2018, the BCCI had banned a Meghalaya-bound Delhi player, Jaskirat Singh Sachdeva, for producing a fake birth certificate to play in an Under-19 tournament.

Background

The problem of age fraud has existed for a long time and it is not only limited to the Indian Team or the sport of cricket.

In India, it is especially a perennial issue in junior cricket or the Under-19 team.

In his MAK Pataudi lecture in 2015, former India captain and India A coach Rahul Dravid had acknowledged age-fudging as a major problem in Indian cricket and welcomed BCCI’s decision to allow a player to compete in the U-19 World Cup only once.

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