A World Cup Hero, Three Birth Certificates, and 65 Banned Cricketers

One hundred and fifteen months. That is the age discrepancy the Cricket Association of Bengal found in the records of Arun Kumar Chaurasiya, who played Under-19 cricket in the 2023-24 season. Not fifteen months. Not fifty. One hundred and fifteen — nearly a decade. A man who should have been playing Ranji Trophy was bowling to teenagers in age-group cricket. And nobody, at any level, noticed.

Chaurasiya is the most extreme case, but he is far from alone. On September 4, 2026, the CAB dropped a list of 65 players — sixty-five — barred from registration and transfers across the 2026-27 and 2027-28 domestic seasons due to age-related documentation fraud. The list includes a U19 World Cup winner, a current India U19 squad member, and multiple players with discrepancies measured not in months but in years.

This isn't a rogue case. This is an epidemic wearing a cricket kit.

Here is a sentence that should make every Indian cricket fan uncomfortable: Ravi Kumar, the left-arm pacer who took 4 for 34 in the final of the 2022 ICC Under-19 World Cup in the West Indies — the match where India beat England to lift the trophy — has been flagged with a 45-month age discrepancy.

Forty-five months. Nearly four years. That means when Ravi Kumar was running in to bowl at Antigua in February 2022, representing India at a World Cup, he may have been significantly older than the age limit permitted. His participation records from the 2021-22 season through his U-19, U-23, and senior state squad appearances have been invalidated by the CAB.

Think about what that means. Every U19 match he played, every domestic game where he was selected on the strength of age-group credentials, every young bowler who missed out because the slot went to someone who shouldn't have been in the squad — all of it potentially tainted. India celebrated that World Cup win. The footage of Ravi Kumar steaming in at Antigua is on highlight reels. But was it fair?

Rohit Yadav's case is almost comical in its audacity. The India Under-19 leg-spinner possessed three separate birth certificates listing three different years of birth: 2007, 2009, and 2010. His Aadhaar card records were equally chaotic — showing 2006 in updates from 2017 and 2020, then switching to 2009 in 2021. When he registered with the Cricket Association of Bengal, his birth year was documented as 2007.

Despite all of this, Rohit represented India on the Under-19 tour of Sri Lanka in July, where he took six wickets and helped the side win the final Test. He was then selected for the upcoming home series against Australia U19, starting September 18. The discrepancies only surfaced during a document scrutiny exercise during the Sri Lanka tour.

The BCCI handed him an immediate two-year ban. He goes from an India squad to a cricket exile, and the Australia U19 series will have a hole where a promising legspinner used to be.

The BCCI introduced an amnesty scheme in 2020, allowing players to self-report age discrepancies and avoid suspensions. The idea was simple: come clean, fix your records, and move on. Enhanced verification measures followed — requiring birth certificates, educational documents, and Aadhaar cross-checks for all U19 registrations.

But six years later, a single state association has just found 65 players with fraudulent documentation. That tells you the amnesty didn't work. That tells you the verification processes had holes large enough to drive a 115-month discrepancy through. And that tells you Bengal is almost certainly not the only state with this problem — it may simply be the only one that looked.

The incentive structure has always been the issue. State associations historically overlooked age fraud because winning age-group trophies enhanced their administrative records. Coaches looked the other way because older players won matches. Parents and local academies gamed the system because early selection meant early IPL scouts meant early money. Everyone benefited except the genuinely age-eligible kids who got pushed out by adults pretending to be teenagers.

The uncomfortable truth that nobody in the BCCI wants to say out loud: this is just Bengal. One state association, one audit, 65 players. India has 38 state and territorial cricket associations. If even half of them have similar problems — and there is no reason to think Bengal is uniquely corrupt — the scale of age fraud in Indian domestic cricket could run into the hundreds.

The historical precedent is damning. Remember Manjot Kalra, man of the match in the 2018 U19 World Cup final? Faced age fraud allegations and a two-year ban. These aren't isolated incidents. They are the ones who got caught.

The BCCI deserves credit for acting decisively on the cases it finds. Rohit Yadav's ban was immediate and unambiguous. But the question isn't whether the board punishes fraud — it's whether the entire junior cricket infrastructure is built on a foundation of fabricated birth certificates, where grown men bowl at children and nobody asks why the quick bowler has a five o'clock shadow.

Sixty-five players. One state. One audit. That's not a crackdown. That's just the beginning.