Pakistan sports should get rid of fake age culture: Razi

LAHORE: Pakistan’s former badminton coach Raziuddin Ahmed has stressed that it’s the right time to get rid of the fake age culture in Pakistan’s sports.

“I found many players from different sports who possess bogus age certificates. This is a huge obstruction for the upcoming talent which is at the right age of development,” Razi told ‘The News’ from Islamabad.

“This evil practice not only is destroying the standard of sports in Pakistan but is also creating a bad image for the country at international level,” he said. Razi was also worried about the recent objection raised over the age of the recently crowned world junior squash champion Hamza Khan by the Egyptian Squash Federation. “In the past Pakistan’s squash players Israr Ahmed, Shoukat Abbas and Nasir Iqbal also faced similar issues. These athletes lost their careers due to stern action taken against them by the World Squash Federation (WSF),” he said.

He said as far as Hamza’s case is concerned the ball is in the court of the World Squash Federation (WSF) which has the most advanced medical facilities for age verification with forensic DNA fingerprinting to forensic (EPI)-genomics with best accurate results. “There are a lot of players from different sports with their fake date of birth that does not match with their appearance. Their parents repeatedly change Form-B from NADRA until their children win national junior titles. On the other hand sports federations don’t take pain to verify this official document until they themselves are interested,” he said.