The Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) has begun their verification process of identifying all the documents submitted by the players for plying their trade in the first and second division tournaments for the 2020-21 season.
CAB had earlier vouched for the fact that it has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to any corrupt and fraudulent practices. They have formed a verification cell very recently to make sure that there is complete transparency in the system.
“We have decided to utilise this Lockdown Period productively as we have already started the verification of the documents submitted to us to ascertain its genuineness,” CAB President Avishek Dalmiya was quoted as saying in an official release.
“This is a part of the cleansing process since we are determined to put the entire system in order at the earliest and in a time-specific manner,” Dalmiya added.
CAB’s reputation has come under scrutiny in the past for age frauds among players. Back in October 2019, three players who were selected in the Bengal U-19 team for the Vinoo Mankad Trophy namely Balkesh Yadav, Rahul Singh and Sk. Ajharuddin were found ineligible by BCCI for producing false documents.
The current CAB president has expressed his desire to impose more stringent checks to prevent such frauds in the future.
“Once the verification is completed, the outcome would be placed before the verification cell for further course of action including laying down of more stringent checks and policies to prevent any such fraud in future,” added Dalmiya.
Speaking about the possibility of age frauds, Snehasish Ganguly clarified the fact that there could be players who could come with forged documents but the verification exercise will mean that such incidents will be dealt with very sternly.
“There could be possibilities that some of the documents submitted to us being forged or tampered with. However, this verification exercise being done by the agency that manages our database would help us find out such incidents, if any, so that it may be dealt with sternly,” the senior Ganguly said.
“This would also enable us to screen out and scrutinise all the doubtful cases prior to the commencement of the next season to make it a cleaner one,” he added.