Cricket Association of Nepal (CAN) flayed the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) decision to disqualify Nepal from the ACC U-15 Elite Cup claiming that the hosts did not fielded any over-age players.
“We conducted bone, chronological, physiological and dental age tests to all players and only named those in the team who were found of right age,” Binaya Raj Pandey, the CAN president, said in a press conference. “We had no over-age players in the team and ACC decision to disqualify us was wrong.”
Pandey also criticized ACC for having a flawed verification system. “ACC’s test in May 2006 showed that the age of a Nepali player, Prajesh Bahadur Singh, to be 13.7 years. But in November this year, he was found of over 16 years old,” he said questioning the authenticity of the tests.
CAN also claimed that ACC’s behavior showed they too did not believe in the results. “First, ACC decided to disqualify three teams and revised the tie-sheet on December 1, but when Nepal protested that, they decided to disqualify seven teams and held a final between Kuwait and Singapore,” he informed. “Besides, they have not given us any documents about the tests so far.”
Pandey also criticized ACC for holding a decisive meeting without him, one of the members of the Age Verification Committee. Accepting that ACC has shown immaturity in the decision-making, Pandey added that CAN had a plan to ensure no such disgrace in future. “We will send test reports of all regional players to ACC two months in advance and only select team with the players confirmed by them,” he said.
CAN has formally sent a protest letter to ACC in this regard and hoping for their reply soon.
On Dec 1, ACC has disqualified seven nations – Nepal, Hong Kong, Afghanistan, Thailand, Malaysia, Oman and Saudi Arabia for fielding overage players in the ACC U-15 Elite Cup held in Kathmandu. UAE was earlier disqualified for not meeting the playing conditions leaving only two ‘legitimate’ teams – Kuwait and Singapore, who contested in the final.