On Tuesday, The Board of Control for Cricket (BCCI) announced that if a cricketer is found guilty of age fudging will be banned from all its recognized tournaments for a period of two years.

In their official statement regarding the same, BCCI said, “The BCCI has a zero-tolerance policy for age fraud in sport and has taken strict action against cricketers found guilty of manipulating their date of birth certificates while registering for BCCI tournaments. As conveyed to state associations at the start of the season, BCCI wishes to reiterate that from the 2018-19 season, any cricketer who is found guilty of tampering his/her date of birth will be disqualified and barred from participating in any BCCI tournament for a period of 2 years i.e. 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons.”

Earlier, a cricketer faced a ban of one year. In September, the BCCI had banned a Meghalaya-bound Delhi player, Jaskirat Singh Sachdeva, for producing a fake birth certificate to play in an Under-19 tournament.

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Age fudging is one of the most common phenomena which has been taking place in junior cricket. In 2016, former India skipper, Rahul Dravid had acknowledged age-fudging as a major problem in Indian cricket and which left BCCI to take the decision of allowing a player to compete in the U-19 World Cup only once.

Interestingly, in this season’s Indian Super League, a player from Jamshedpur FC named Gaurav Mukhi was handed a six-month suspended from all competitions by the All-India Football Federation (AIFF) under its purview.

As per AIFF’s report, Mukhi was found guilty on the basis of the evidence provided by him, his manager’s statements of U-16 AIFF academy in 2015.

Mukhi scored the equalizer for Jamshedpur against Bengaluru FC in an ISL game this year to become the youngest player ever to score a goal in the competition. However, his suspension meant that the joy was short-lived.