Express Investigation | Dodgy records, fake IDs: Under BCCI watch, Puducherry sells short-cut to cricket big league

BCCI

Private coaches offer 'packages' for cricketers from other states to become 'locals' in Puducherry-- opening the door to local association teams and BCCI riches.

Indian cricket’s global rise rests on a hard, almost unforgiving ecosystem. A vast, hungry talent pool, relentless competition at every rung, the muscle of the IPL, and coaches who push players through an exacting, often brutal, screening process. The system’s strength lies in the belief of fairness — that skill, sweat and selection together create a level playing field.

In Puducherry, that field has been turned upside down.

Addresses are manufactured, eligibility certificates sold for a fee, and a one-man proprietorship has morphed into a full-blown parallel selection system that operates right under the nose of the Cricket Association of Pondicherry (CAP) and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) whose job is it to monitor it, an investigation by The Indian Express has found.

Over the past three months, The Indian Express reviewed over 2,000 registration forms of players in the Union Territory, spoke to over a dozen former and current players and officials, tracked down several listed addresses of residences and institutions on the ground.

It revealed a well-oiled pipeline operated mainly by coaches at private academies who offer backdated admissions in educational institutions and dodgy Aadhaar addresses, or even job records, to help cricketers from other states meet the BCCI’s mandatory one-year residency requirement and become “local” cricketers — all for “packages” upto Rs 1.2 lakh or more. And a fast-track route to CAP teams across age-groups.

Consider this illustrative example: 17 “local” cricketers from eight states, who are part of various CAP squads, share one Aadhaar address at Mothilal Nagar in Moolakulam. The homeowner said she had leased out a portion of the house to four cricketers a “few years ago” who were evicted “within months” for non-payment of dues.