India Fights a Big Problem in Youth Sports: Fake Ages

In June, more than 500 wrestlers were thrown out of India's under-17 national championships for lying about their ages. Just months before that, about 20 school soccer teams were removed from a major tournament for using overage players. Experts say these events are part of a deep and widespread problem in Indian youth sports that has gone on for many years.

Sports lawyer Aahna Mehrotra has studied age fraud closely and written a paper about it. She says the problem exists in almost every sport that has age-group competition. She told Reuters it is worst at the youngest levels, where the prizes are big but the checks are weak.

The reasons athletes and families cheat are easy to understand. Extra years of physical growth can make a player bigger, stronger, and faster. Winning youth events can bring scholarships, sponsorships, and in cricket, a shot at an Indian Premier League contract worth millions of rupees.

India's system of recording births has long made cheating easier to get away with. Records are scattered and there is no single digital database tracking every young athlete's real age. This gap allows dishonest parents or coaches to alter documents and change a child's listed birth year.

PSM Chandran, president of the Indian Federation of Sports Medicine, wants age fraud to be punished the same way doping is. He noted that sports federations have not done enough to stop the problem. 'We have such strict punishment for doping. Why can't we have something similar for the age frauds?' he said.

The story of teenage cricket star Vaibhav Sooryavanshi shows both the challenge and the progress being made. When he burst onto the national scene, many people online doubted his real age. But India's cricket board confirmed he had been tested since age 8, and he made his international debut at just 15.

Since 2012, the BCCI has used a method called TW3 to check athletes' ages using an X-ray of the left hand and wrist. India's football and tennis federations have adopted it too. But experts warn the test is not perfect and can sometimes wrongly flag a naturally large teenager as overage.

India's Sports Ministry has drafted a new plan to fight age fraud. It would lock in athletes' identities early in a secure digital database and combine multiple types of medical exams. It also proposes criminal penalties for adults who help young athletes cheat, along with an amnesty window for athletes to fix their records without punishment.

Mehrotra stressed that punishments must actually be enforced to mean anything. She also reminded officials that young athletes are often victims, not the masterminds, of age fraud. Authorities must protect accused athletes and guard their personal information carefully, she said.