New Delhi: In a remarkable development, the BCCI has introduced an additional bone test at the junior level to ensure that the young cricketers currently apply in eligibility calculations due to the “+1 factor”, which often disqualify players by a narrow margin.According to the current process, the age of a cricketer is determined through the TW3 method (used to assess bone age), and “+1” is added to project eligibility for the next season in the same age group.With the updated rule, players in the category of under -16 boys will now be allowed to undergo a second bone test in the next season, whether the “+1” factor should disqualify them in the previous one.A BCCI source told PTI, “This is being done for an accurate age and ensure that no player loses due to arithmetic calculations rather than scientific calculations.”Currently, the bone age limit is set 16.5 years for U-16 boys and 15 years for U-15 girls.The source said, “This means a player’s age is 16.4 or below, which is in the case of women for male cricketers in the next season and for participation of 14.9 or below.”To make the new policy more clear, if a male U-16 player in the 2025–26 season appears 15.4 years in the bone test results, they will not be re-tested in the next season. Instead, one year will be added to arithmetic, by taking his bone age to 16.4 for the 2026–27 season, it will be kept eligible to compete.Conversely, if a player has a bone age of 15.5 or more, adding a year is 16.5 or above, which is more than the eligibility limit of 16.4 and is excluding it from the U-16 tournament.
“It is possible that this arithmetic calculation does not reflect a player’s real age correctly, so that they can lose on one year of eligibility,” the source said.For U-15 girls, if a bone test suggests that a player is 13.9 years old this season, he is eligible to play with the age of 14.9 in the next season.But if she tests 14 or older in this season, she can now participate, but not next year, looking at the 14.9 age cap.
