Hockey India welcomes FIH’s proposed age monitoring measures

Age of players in the age-group tournaments are age-old problem in the field of field hockey. One can surmise most hockey playing countries have this problem, irrespective of the fact that whether their country’s media takes note of it or not. This way Indian media is relentless in its roving eye on age of plalyers, and whenever such issues cropped up, it was unrelenting, unsparing even as it got termed ‘unpatriotic’, sometimes.

A veteran lady official, who functioned as Tournament Director of a Continental Competition in Asia, once said in a press conference that she was totally surprised when almost entire team of a East Asian women’s team were born in a particular month!

So, it goes.

However, the FIH, global governing body, has proposed a wide ranging measure to detect and punish age manipulators in the forthcoming Junior World Cup.

“Six players from each team will be subject to medical examination before the Junior World Cup. Even if one is found on wrong side, the whole team will be called for the test. Then, the faltering team will be debarred for specific period of time”, explained Narinder Batra, Secretary General of Hockey India on the sidelines of a recent function it organized.

“We welcome any and every measure the FIH will take to control age menace that haunts administrators”, he added.

“I cannot guarantee for the whole country at all levels, say schools and college, but am sure we controlled the age issues at national teams well and true”, he emphasized.

“We in Hockey India had already taken enough measures. All the boys in the Bangalore junior camp were called for a test in SAI lab, after that again in our chain of hospitals”, he added.

His family runs famous Batra Hospitals across India.

Apart from the welcome measures, it is worthwhile to mention that a couple of years ago, Indian administrators have rejected most of players for a junior camp, whose bone morrow scans did not conform with their certified age.