Tackling the age-old menace

Age fraud is pulling the country down in more ways than one and it is proving difficult to stop

- Shahid Judge

MUMBAI: Rahul Dravid once stood on a podium and spoke for 30 minutes on a topic he holds close to the chest: the menace of age fraud in sports.

"I think of this overage business as dangerous and even toxic," Dravid, the former India captain and one of the greatest batters in the game, said while delivering a lecture at the MAK Pataudi Memorial in 2015. "At 14, it may be a matter of age criteria, at 25 it may be fixing and corruption. How are the two different in any way? In both cases, is it not blatant cheating?"

The lecture took place 10 years ago, but to this day, the problem of age fraud continues to plague sports in India.

Last month, the Indian sports ministry took steps to address the problem by working on a draft bill to introduce 10 points in the National Code Against Age Fraud in Sports (NCAAFS). It's the first major step the ministry has taken in almost 15 years to address a problem that has affected sports for decades.

Going back generations

No exact date can be attributed to when the problem started.

"I joined the sports industry in 1978, and it has been going on since long before then," said Dr Ashok Ahuja, former head of the department of sports medicine and sciences at the National Institute of Sport (NIS) in Patiala. "Even now, children are born outside hospitals, especially in villages. Not every birth is registered in our country. Only when they go to school do they rush to get a birth certificate"