NewsDio Desk : In an age where Aadhar has become the most obvious mechanism of ascertaining the real age of an individual, it is no wonder that the player’s age can’t be hidden in any manner.
Yes, call it a destiny where a certain player represented the Junior National Championship under 21 , while he was 17 back in 2019, however, he did a big mistake.
Yes, he took part in the Under 17 category in the sub-junior national in Jind Haryana, and that’s how things didn’t find it hard to be in front of us.
The Aadhar card shows that the player has attained an age of 20 years when he list to Manipur, 2-4 on March 18th . The game was a part of under -17 tournament.
It wasn’t hard to find the malpractice which the player has done, on March 19th. Hockey India suspended the player. He has been leveled with serious charges where he has done age related fraud from sub-junior nationals.
Based on the authenticity of the documents, it was found that the player wasn’t meant supposed to play in the same age group, and has scored all four goals for Manipur in the game against Maharashtra.
The win gave Manipur easy entry into the semifinals where they are going to face Haryana on Wednesday.
There has been a demand by Maharashtra which expect that the goals scored by the alleged player should be nullified.
As per the version of Maharashtra’s team which said that the main reason they have lost is due to all the goals which were scored by him. Hence, they should be nullified. The team was writing a protesting letter, where it said the same thing.
Hockey India didn’t cancel the goals he scored, even though he was suspended.
As per the version coming from Hockey India’s delegate Sonia Bhatla, who said that the player has undergone a scrutiny after his alleged role in the malpractices has come to the fore. After the comparison has been done based on the two records, it was found that he has done malpractices as it has been proven that the player has breached hockey India Code of Conduct. Therefore, the specific player will be suspended permanently in further matches of the championship.
In order to make age related facts transparent, Hockey India started a portal in 2019 where it has become compulsory for all the players to have their data with age proofs online especially those, who are in junior and sub-junior categories.
There is also a strict mechanism to curb age their fraud where Hockey India has a provision of using Identity Cards to every registered players of the Hockey India Member Units.
This is done in compliance with National Sports Development Code 2011.
However, the current malpractice has forced everyone to re-think that the system is not fool proof and that there is more to be done to make it that way.