The release of Shahid Afridi's autobiography has, to be honest, sickened me to the core.
Rather like Younis Khan, he admits to age-cheating, and seems to think that it is a victimless crime.
I disagree. It is a very serious offence indeed, and in my opinion both players' entire international records should be erased from the records.
Why do I say this?
Matchfixing and use of performance-enhancing drugs are obviously very serious offences which change the course of cricket history and ruin people's careers.
Spotfixing - guessing when a dot ball might be played - is certainly a crime against gamblers, but really doesn't change the course of a game or an opponent's career.
Ball-tampering - when practised to industrial levels like by the Aussies with their sandpaper - certainly ends batsmen's careers and changes the course of matches, and should be much more strictly policed and punished.
Chucking is just as bad - we have seen just how ineffective both Saeed Ajmal and Mohammad Hafeez actually became when they were stopped from chucking. But batsmen - notably Eoin Morgan - had already seen their careers destroyed by bowlers who chucked.
So why do I think that age-cheating is such a serious offence? The answer, quite simply, is because it too destroys careers.
We see this in the cases of Shahid Afridi, whose year of birth has just changed from 1980 to 1975, and Younis Khan, who turned out to be born in 1975 and not 1978.
Age cheating ruins careers.
Consider Shahid Afridi's elevation to the Pakistan captaincy in 2010. He was supposedly 30 years old, so it made some sense as a medium-term decision...….until he ran away in mid-tour in England.
But if he had been known to be 35 years old it would have been insane to appoint him as captain.
A similar story applies to the case of Younis Khan. When he was recalled with Misbah, he was supposedly 32 years old. But his own age-cheating meant that Pakistan was actually carrying two 40-something year old batsmen for several years, in which they failed with the frequency one would expect at that age outside Asia. (Younis failed in 5 out of 6 innings in South Africa, 6 out of 7 in England, 4 out of 4 in New Zealand and 4 out of 6 in Australia, giving him 19 failures in 23 innings in those big series.)
Any sane team would have made a choice between Misbah and Younis so as not to have two geriatrics retire simultaneously. But because Younis was thought - wrongly - to be three years younger, they both played on and on and on...….and left Babar Azam on the bench for what should have been the first two years of his Test career, then retired together and left the team to lose at home to Sri Lanka.
It's exactly the same in football. African teams are profilic age cheats and tend to do well in the Olympics, in which 8 Under-23's play with 3 overage players in what tends to be a dress rehearsal for the World Cup 6 years later.
Nigeria in 1996 harmed the careers of countless Argentinians and Brazilians on their way to Olympic Gold. Only to bomb out 4-1 to Denmark at the World Cup two years later when we saw that rather than having a superb generation of 24 year olds their team was full of 30 year olds who had lied about their age and were in decline. Cameroon did the same thing in 2000, and the Nigerian Olympic silver medallists of 2008 had mostly retired by the age of "30".
Pakistan's cricketers are no different. Waqar Younis and Aaqib Javed had absurdly reduced ages, as did Shahid Afridi and Younis Khan.
And it matters.
Shahid Afridi got his ODI call-up in 1994 as 16 year old when he was rushed from the Caribbean, where he was fraudulently excelling in an Under-19 series against the West Indies......a series he was too old to play in.
The integrity of junior international cricket is ruined by this sort of cheating.
Go back to 2010, when Shahid Afridi was appointed to the national captaincy on the basis of his lies about his age.
Australia Under-19 beat Pakistan Under-19 in the Under-19 World Cup Final at Christchurch.
Mitchell Marsh, Josh Hazlewood, Nic Maddinson and Kane Richardson defeated Babar Azam, Hammad Azam et al.
But if any of those players weren't really Under-19, then it was men against boys, and it's impossible to identify who should be elevated to the national team.
Age cheating is a scourge on our game. Mediocre older players obstruct superior ones from advancing in their careers, and promising youngsters are discarded when older men in the opposition outplay them.
I don't care whether you are Younis Khan or Waqar Younis or Shahid Afridi. If you are found to be an age cheat, your record should be wiped from the records just as if you were a drug cheat.
Shahid Afridi's international runs and wickets belong with Ben Johnson's 9.79 Olympic 100 metres Gold Medal.
In the dustbin of history.
Rather like Younis Khan, he admits to age-cheating, and seems to think that it is a victimless crime.
I disagree. It is a very serious offence indeed, and in my opinion both players' entire international records should be erased from the records.
Why do I say this?
Matchfixing and use of performance-enhancing drugs are obviously very serious offences which change the course of cricket history and ruin people's careers.
Spotfixing - guessing when a dot ball might be played - is certainly a crime against gamblers, but really doesn't change the course of a game or an opponent's career.
Ball-tampering - when practised to industrial levels like by the Aussies with their sandpaper - certainly ends batsmen's careers and changes the course of matches, and should be much more strictly policed and punished.
Chucking is just as bad - we have seen just how ineffective both Saeed Ajmal and Mohammad Hafeez actually became when they were stopped from chucking. But batsmen - notably Eoin Morgan - had already seen their careers destroyed by bowlers who chucked.
So why do I think that age-cheating is such a serious offence? The answer, quite simply, is because it too destroys careers.
We see this in the cases of Shahid Afridi, whose year of birth has just changed from 1980 to 1975, and Younis Khan, who turned out to be born in 1975 and not 1978.
Age cheating ruins careers.
Consider Shahid Afridi's elevation to the Pakistan captaincy in 2010. He was supposedly 30 years old, so it made some sense as a medium-term decision...….until he ran away in mid-tour in England.
But if he had been known to be 35 years old it would have been insane to appoint him as captain.
A similar story applies to the case of Younis Khan. When he was recalled with Misbah, he was supposedly 32 years old. But his own age-cheating meant that Pakistan was actually carrying two 40-something year old batsmen for several years, in which they failed with the frequency one would expect at that age outside Asia. (Younis failed in 5 out of 6 innings in South Africa, 6 out of 7 in England, 4 out of 4 in New Zealand and 4 out of 6 in Australia, giving him 19 failures in 23 innings in those big series.)
Any sane team would have made a choice between Misbah and Younis so as not to have two geriatrics retire simultaneously. But because Younis was thought - wrongly - to be three years younger, they both played on and on and on...….and left Babar Azam on the bench for what should have been the first two years of his Test career, then retired together and left the team to lose at home to Sri Lanka.
It's exactly the same in football. African teams are profilic age cheats and tend to do well in the Olympics, in which 8 Under-23's play with 3 overage players in what tends to be a dress rehearsal for the World Cup 6 years later.
Nigeria in 1996 harmed the careers of countless Argentinians and Brazilians on their way to Olympic Gold. Only to bomb out 4-1 to Denmark at the World Cup two years later when we saw that rather than having a superb generation of 24 year olds their team was full of 30 year olds who had lied about their age and were in decline. Cameroon did the same thing in 2000, and the Nigerian Olympic silver medallists of 2008 had mostly retired by the age of "30".
Pakistan's cricketers are no different. Waqar Younis and Aaqib Javed had absurdly reduced ages, as did Shahid Afridi and Younis Khan.
And it matters.
Shahid Afridi got his ODI call-up in 1994 as 16 year old when he was rushed from the Caribbean, where he was fraudulently excelling in an Under-19 series against the West Indies......a series he was too old to play in.
The integrity of junior international cricket is ruined by this sort of cheating.
Go back to 2010, when Shahid Afridi was appointed to the national captaincy on the basis of his lies about his age.
Australia Under-19 beat Pakistan Under-19 in the Under-19 World Cup Final at Christchurch.
Mitchell Marsh, Josh Hazlewood, Nic Maddinson and Kane Richardson defeated Babar Azam, Hammad Azam et al.
But if any of those players weren't really Under-19, then it was men against boys, and it's impossible to identify who should be elevated to the national team.
Age cheating is a scourge on our game. Mediocre older players obstruct superior ones from advancing in their careers, and promising youngsters are discarded when older men in the opposition outplay them.
I don't care whether you are Younis Khan or Waqar Younis or Shahid Afridi. If you are found to be an age cheat, your record should be wiped from the records just as if you were a drug cheat.
Shahid Afridi's international runs and wickets belong with Ben Johnson's 9.79 Olympic 100 metres Gold Medal.
In the dustbin of history.
