SC dismisses plea to fix cut-off date for eligibility in domestic tournaments

The Supreme Court of India dismissed a plea by an under-19 cricketer Rhitwicq Additya Sharma. In his plea Rhitwicq has asked the court to ask the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to fix a cut-off date for eligibility to play domestic cricket tournaments.

According to PTI, the bench of justices S A Nazeer and P S Narasimha refused to entertain the plea, saying that it was solely BCCI's prerogative to look into these matters.

"How can we entertain this petition? It's not in our hands all these things. No, you withdraw with liberty to approach. We don't know much about cricket also. Please withdraw; we can't go into all this," the bench articulated.

Representing Rhitwicq, his counsel stated that the Himachal Pradesh High Court asked that BCCI look into this concern and sort this out within six months, with the order eventually benefitting the petitioner.

The above case was eventually withdrawn. However, the plea requested that BCCI be ordered to shift the eligibility cut-off date to April 1 from September 1 every year.

The plea was due to an advertisement by BCCI published in March/April that players born between April 1 and August 31 would not be able to play the age group category tournament, and players born between September 1 and March 31 were eligible.

Rhitwicq stated that due to this rule, his eligibility period was cut to seven months instead of 12 months.

The BCCI has been quite stringent regarding age group, especially in dealing with age fraud in domestic cricket. They have introduced the Tanner Whitehouse 3 (TW3) method for kids up to 16 years and verified the documents they submit.