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When I first read this piece by Makarand Waingankar, I was scandalized.
The Uttar Pradesh left-hand batsman Tanmay Srivastava seems to have played in under-14 for his State when he was 10-years-old! And played five years for the under-19 when the maximum limit as per the board is four years.On hindsight, it shouldnt have scandalized me. After all, I knew of a lot of my friends who had fudged their birth certificates to ensure that they did not miss out on the academic year.
Another player of the team, Sourabh Tiwary of Jharkhand played the first under-14 game for his State when he was 11 and didn’t play the under-17 for the state. Ravindra Jadeja of Saurashtra played two World Cup tournaments and Piyush Chawla did what no teenager in this country has done.
What did surprise me was the shit storm it created. I am pretty sure Peter Roebuck had something to say about this. And Makarand Waingankar himself did a follow up piece ( I am trying to trace the links to those articles. I will update the post as and when I find them).
Maybe because of this, or maybe despite this, I believe there is now a process in place where age is being determined based on bone age
So I have this young acquaintance of mine who plays age group cricket at the district level. And he is in the short list to play for his district. And his selection hinges on his bone age, birth certificate be damned.
All pretty fair. And simple.
Except, in his case, his bone age is 4 years less than his actual age. So a 17 year kid can actually qualify to play for the U-14's because medically, he is qualified to do so.
So the question is, how old is old exactly?
