In an effort to weed out age fudging in the sport, the Mumbai Cricket Association has gone ahead and filed a police complaint against five local cricketers, who were found to have submitted forged documents while registering with the state body.
“Mumbai Cricket Association has lodged a police complaint against players who had submitted forged documents at the time of registration with the Association,” read a statement issued by the MCA on Tuesday.
The complaint has been filed against local cricketers Soham Panwalkar, Mohammad Faiz Rathod, Amey Chemburkar, Govind Yadav and Altamash Khan at Mumbai’s Marine Drive police station.
“All five have played in tournaments that fall under the auspicis of the MCA. We had approached the Municipal Corporation earlier, who had confirmed that the certifiates that these five issued were fake,” MCA Joint Honourary Secretary Unmesh Khanvilkar told Scroll.in.
“There are more players under the scanner and we would follow similar proceedure against them as well once our internal investigation is complete,” Khanvilkar added.
The move follows reports of wide-spread age-fudging in tournaments. The topic had come for discussion during the Association’s Annual General Meeting held earlier this month. Many members had suggested that many cricketers playing in tournaments age-group tournaments in the under-14 to under-23 categories were overage.
In May, the MCA had cracked the whip and suspended these five players along with 11 other for being overage. The police complaint, though, is unprecedented.
The bold step was taken as the association felt it was high time that the menace was weeded out.
“The association in the past has tried many ways in which to stamp out such practices, but did not achieve the desired results. The demand from members and parents was for strict action, so as to dissuade others from adopting similar methods,” Khanvilkar added.