For all the raving he merited, Lamine Yamal wasn’t the most extra-ordinary teenager in sport this week. That sceptre was grabbed by Vaibhav Suryavanshi and, like a piece of willow, he used it to smash all-comers out of the park. Barcelona’s great hope was among them.
Little can match the thrill of seeing the next big thing but even less ranks above the sight of a 14-year-old smashing a century in the Indian Premier League. As nicknames go, Suryavanshi’s was proven to be pretty accurate —Boss Baby.
How he bossed them on Monday. By them, we mean the attack of the Gujarat Titans, and they are big to a man. Giants to a baby. In Mohammed Siraj, Ishant Sharma, Washington Sundar and Prasidh Krishna, we are talking about India internationals; in the Afghan spinner Rashid Khan, they had the former No 1 bowler in the world.
So, before we get to a question that has gained traction in the past few days, let’s recap what Suryavanshi of the Rajasthan Royals did when they threw their toy at his pram.
It was quite a show — a six off the second ball, three more in the fourth over, his 50 reached in the fifth, and 30 runs taken from the 10th alone. After facing 34 balls, Suryavanshi was on 94 and this was his third game at the level.
He treated the 35th delivery like the other 34. Khan’s spin was hooked over the midwicket boundary for Suryavanshi’s 11th six of the innings.
Vaibhav Suryavanshi stunning century in the IPL caught global headlines… but how old is he?
His official date of birth says he is 14, but a previous interview would suggest he is almost 17
Mail Sport’s Riath Al-Samarrai has spoken to experts on sport’s silent battle with age fraud
Needless to say, records were strapped to those missiles —Suryavanshi was the youngest player to hit a century in the IPL by five-and-a-half years. The only guy of any age to reach three figures quicker had done so off 30 balls, but he had also won a T20 World Cup with the West Indies by then. That was Chris Gayle.
Boss Baby? On second thoughts, it feels like an under-sell. Incredible tale. But it is also one that has complications, because acts of great wonder often do. With Suryavanshi, they go to the heart of his story — is he actually 14?
That area of doubt traces to an interview in 2023, when the Indian media was escalating coverage of his amazing rise from a rural village in Bihar, a state in the north-east that borders Nepal.
Suryavanshi happened to mention he had a birthday approaching on September 27 and that he would be turning 15. The issue there is his date of birth is officially listed as March 27, 2011. So which is it? Is he a month past 14, as his family insist with claims of proof, or is he closing in on 17, in line with what he once suggested?
On some levels it is a little trivial — a lad who scores 100 off 35 in the IPL is a phenomenon whether he is 14 or 16. No players were knocked out of an age-grade side, so where is the harm?
But with this situation we are also given an access point to a long-running topic that rarely gets a proper airing. And rarely aired does not mean unimportant. Quite the opposite, actually, because many experts say it is still rife across sport, as it has been for years. I have had a number of conversations to that effect this week.
Age fraud is the common label which most of us have heard in dispatches, but others prefer the softer tag of age manipulation, citing cases that have innocent origins. Simply, some regions do not keep accurate records as elsewhere, and we know this.
Just as we know that can be used as cover for gaming the system. Parts of India fall in that bracket and their former international spinner Amit Mishra was rather candid last year in admitting he had two goes at being 22 at the request of a coach. It was all a bit of a joke to him.
Former India cricket star Amit Mishra admitted his age was falsified at the request of a coach
Some regions do not keep as accurate records as others, though that can be used as cover
Because we don’t discuss it like we do other kinds of cheating, do we? And that is odd, given the obvious benefits to doctoring your mileage, from professional contracts and the endorsements that accompany the chases for the next wonderkid, to the distortion of key competitions at youth level.
‘It is a big problem,’ I was told by Brett Clothier. He is the head of the Athletics Integrity Unit and a serious operator — hunting dopers on behalf of World Athletics is his field of expertise and he is one of the finest in sport. He has caught hundreds. But another part of his gig is investigating those whose age isn’t what it says in a passport.
‘I’d say it’s as hard as catching top-level drugs cheats,’ he added, but I’d speculate it is far harder based on another detail Clothier mentioned.
After two years of concerted effort, Clothier has successfully brought only one case of age fraud to book. That was Luguelin Santos of the Dominican Republic, who admitted in 2023 he had obtained a false passport to get into the world youth championships, where he defrauded another runner out of a medal.
The rest? Clothier suspects they are out there in significant numbers, but the difference between hard evidence and anecdotal is vast. Sometimes the process has meant arriving in a remote town and going door-to-door for source material — an expensive approach littered with obstacles.
Clothier spoke less of forged documents containing certain tells and more of legitimate passports containing false information drawn from manipulated birth-certificates. From there, he detailed individuals chasing an edge rather than organisation-sponsored conspiracies that might leave extra breadcrumbs on the trail. Turning leads into concrete is exceptionally difficult.
‘I suspect people underestimate the prevalence,’ he said. The same is known of Major League Baseball’s mining of young talent from the Dominican Republic. Last November, a 19-year-old under the assumed name of Cesar Altagracia landed a $4million deal with San Diego Padres. His documentation led them to believe he was 14 on a skywards trajectory and the saga was not isolated.
Football is more confident of its position, but earlier this year Manchester City and Manchester United were reported to have six overseas academy players between them whose ages have generated serious suspicion among the parents of others.
Dominican Republic sprinter Luguelin Santos admitted to using a false passport to enter the world youth championships, where he won a medal
Samuel Eto’o intimated many athletes are still trying to beat the wrist test, which can calculate bone age
We can still admit a star has been born in Suryavanshi, but the case of his age stays a mystery
When I spoke on Friday to Professor Jiri Dvorak, who was FIFA’s chief medical officer for over 20 years until 2017, he said the game ‘once had a problem, but not now’.
His introduction of MRI scans in the late Noughties to check for bone fusion in the left wrist was decisive to a major clampdown, and maybe we would see one notorious scenario in 2023 as validation. When Cameroon secured their qualification for that year’s Africa Cup of Nations’ Under 17 tournament, 21 players of the 30-man squad were disqualified for failing the wrist tests. Of those called in to replace them, another 11 then fell down the same way.
But is that proof of a working system or proof that athletes on a large scale are still trying to beat it? Samuel Eto’o, the president of the Cameroonian Football Federation, has intimated a view that both are true.
In the curious case of the Boss Baby, frankly I have no idea which way to bat. He looks like a genius in either direction and it would seem a star has been born.
Alas, cosmologists often struggle with a precise ‘when’ in those matters and sport remains well placed to empathise.
