One of the shocking news that came up in cricket fraternity is the Delhi crime branch unearthed age fudging case of U-19 World Cup winning left-handed opener Manjot Kalra a few days back. Age fudging is explained as when a particular sportsman lies about his actual age most of the time by showing less age than it actually is to enter in particular slots of matches to be played. At the First-Class Stage there are a lot of tournaments like under 16 or 19 etc and this is very famous and worthy tournaments and to sneak into these major leagues, people resort to these unethical crimes. Manjot is been suspected to have reduced his age by a year, originally born on Jan 1998 but shows to be Jan 1999.
But not just Manjot, but various famous cricketer’s names have come up in this controversy like Nitish Rana, Prashant Bhandari, Raza Khan and many more yet to come. But only these players faced the heat of the situation but it is believed that many famous players have fudged their age to make a mark up there but this thing never saw the light of the day. This matter is not even new, these cricketers were charged in the year 2014.
If we decide to penetrate more into this matter the cricketers who lie about their age and take away the golden opportunity from other players who have worked day in and day out for some rare chances and playing legit. And as we say this, we surely are not saying that players who have done this didn’t have to break there sweat to become what they are, but working in gray surely affects the purity of this gentleman’s game. The competition is so ruthless and fierce even at this level, that it is very easy to have dicey integrity because at that point all the innumerable sacrifices that have been taken to get there gets recalled and taking the right judgement call at that point is very difficult. And that clouds our judgement. And this surely puts a very wrong message on the minds of young pals who are playing out there, dreaming to achieve their dreams. They might think or be willing to jump on another side of the fence just to achieve what they want.
So, to control such fudges the coaches or the mentor of this cricketer who play a vital role in the career of young talented cricketers and especially parents should look into these matters and stop such crimes then and there itself. Because if these young lads get caught while following such unethical paths, they might get disbarred from their respective state board and might never get the chance to play international cricket.
