* In 2006, India hosted the AFC U-20 championships in Kolkata and Goa, with the hosts playing their group games at the Salt Lake Stadium in Kolkata. At one game, then national team coach Bob Houghton expressed his surprise at seeing a member of the senior Indian squad leading the U-20 frontline. One of India's most-travelled footballers, the Manipur-born striker in question is currently with his ninth I-League club and has also turned out for two Indian Super League (ISL) franchises. Various online resources list his year of birth as 1984, 1982 or 1980.
* A little over two years later, an upcoming central defender was about to shoot a profile for television after a training session with his Kolkata-based club. Asked by the producer to introduce himself to camera with his name, position and age, his innocent reply was, "Official age or actual age?" A regular in the Indian team in recent years, the player had said that he was actually 24 but "officially" 21. Eight years on, his recorded age stands at 28.
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These examples -- all witnessed first-hand by this writer -- are from the past decade, but the menace of age fraud has come into sharper focus once again following recent media allegations surrounding India's 21-member squad for next month's FIFA U-17 World Cup.
And though the All India Football Federation (AIFF) has denied the latest claims, the stakes are considerably higher this time with India's reputation as tournament debutants and hosts on the line.
Two years ago, head of youth development of the AIFF Richard Hood wrote an essay where he quoted Vignesh Avarekad, a former U-19 footballer with a multiple I-League-winning club, as saying that it was "appalling to see players in their mid-twenties posing as 17-year-olds and to see 18/19-year-olds changing their date of birth to having been born in the year 'two thousand zero'."
There have been three cases of teams being pulled up for age-related offences this year itself. The Mohun Bagan Academy team was banned from the U-18 I-League, while Gurgaon-based Conscient FC were disqualified from the Delhi zone of the U-16 I-League and Bengaluru-based Ozone FC from the national leg of the same tournament -- all for having fielded overage players. Ozone played the final -- where they lost to Minerva Academy -- following a stay order from the Karnataka High Court.
"I said then that this is not right," says Ranjit Bajaj, owner and chairman of Minerva. "[I-League CEO] Sunando [Dhar] said that we will take retrospective action. If we had lost the final, perhaps some action would have been taken, because nothing has been done yet."
Dhar told ESPN, "Ozone have subsequently withdrawn the case, and as far as the AIFF is concerned, both cases [Conscient and Ozone] are closed." The Karnataka judiciary website also does not indicate any legal action taken by either party since the final in February.
Time for corrective action
Bajaj -- four players from whose academy are in India's U-17 World Cup squad -- talks about the most recent edition of the Subroto Cup in New Delhi, where his squad included three exceptional talents who had caught the academy's eye during the U-13 I-League trials in Chandigarh. "Over there, some people from the IYSA [Indian Youth Soccer Association] came over and told us that these same boys had played for them in that season's U-16 I-League," says Bajaj. "These boys had changed their names and also their father's names, so that tracing them would be impossible. We had to let these boys go, and we informed the AIFF about this immediately."
The approaching World Cup makes taking some corrective action imperative.
"In these age-group tournaments, FIFA has the right to do a random test, just like they would do in dope control," says sports medicine specialist Pallab Basumallik. "There could be one or two players that the tournament officials -- like the medical officer or the vigilance officer -- feel suspicious about [and] they can put them to test at any of the centres. A relaxation of up to four months is normally allowed, but if somebody is a year overage, then both the player and the federation can be in trouble."
Bajaj, who says one of his academy players was taken for a random MRI after being selected for the World Cup but found to be within the age limit, feels India need to be proactive in clearing doubts about any of their squad members, especially as the hosts. "Even if there's a hint of suspicion, there needs to be a corrective measure at this stage," he says. "The AIFF cannot afford to leave this hanging. You need to ensure you put real fear of the system into clubs and players."
Onus on AIFF
Age fraud is not new to Indian football or sport, say experts. Basumallik says that age-group football is a relatively new concept, especially in Kolkata. "There were under-height tournaments, where you had to be under 5'5" or 5'," he says. "The concept of age-groups only started around the time the Nehru Cup began, in the 1980s. That's when the federation started planning under-age tournaments such as Mir Iqbal Hussain Trophy [for U-16 boys]."
Basumallik says that till recent advancements in technology, even sports medicine had only primitive methods to determine age. "We used to have a look at the teeth -- the developments of molars and premolars," he says. "For instance, if you have a third molar, it might mean you have just crossed 12. But then, this was also not a very precise method, and you could have exceptions of up to three or four years. For example, someone with a calcium disorder might not show the same dental pattern as the average for that age."
Bajaj feels the onus lies on the federation to make age-testing more stringent. "AIFF rules state that we accept birth certificates or Aadhaar cards or a passport as proof of identity and age," he says. "We as a club cannot question that, because then the players or their parents can take us to court for questioning supposedly government-issued documents. Parents send their kids with blank age certificates, which look completely bona fide, and say to us, "Jo sahi lage, woh bhar do (Fill it up the way that you want to)."
MRI or TW3?
So which are the methods that the AIFF can implement to tackle the age-fraud menace in the sport?
Bajaj believes MRI tests of the wrist, considered a suitable but expensive alternative to X-rays, need to be made mandatory at age-group tournaments from a young age.
Avarekad is quoted as saying in Hood's essay that more teams need to follow the lead of his former club, which has set up academies for age groups as young as Under-9s. "This not only aids in breeding players from a young age, it also adds an official documentation of the players' ages, thus eliminating the possibility of the players fudging their age at a later date," he said.
Basumallik says that the best available method is the Tanner-Whitehouse III (TW3) test that takes a digital X-ray of the left wrist joint and the lower part of the forearm, and is a standardised way of gauging the bone density of a person. "This method is very new and needs further study," he says. "There's still no fool-proof method by which you can say that this person is definitely of a certain age. There's probably a margin of error of about three to six months that you have to consider." The TW3 test was adopted in 2012 as the standard method for age assessment by the BCCI, the governing body for cricket in India and easily the most professional of all the sports federations in the country.
"Most of the advanced countries have a three-step method," says Basumallik. "First, they take a definite identity proof. Second, they need a birth registration certificate, which in most countries has to be done within one year of birth. And third, you have to have the reports from any certified sports medicine centre. Nobody in India goes through this grind. As a result, the whole purpose of an age-group tournament in India gets defeated."
As long as this happens, situations like the one Basumallik faced when he was team doctor for the Bengal team at an U-16 tournament at the Barabati Stadium in Cuttack are likely to recur. "The day we reached, I realised I had left my scissors behind," he says. "I had to go to find some blades, because you have to strap over the rings before games. I went to the shops around the periphery of the stadium, but all the blades were out of stock, because all the teams had had a sudden urge to shave!"