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After the Santosh Trophy, the Under-14 boys’ cricket team for the 69th National School Games is the latest to be hit by allegations of regional bias, with accusations that the numbers were skewed against Jammu prompting the UT administration to initiate an inquiry into the team selection.
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The 69th National School Games for the 2025-26 season are being held at Rajasthan’s Sikar from January 19 to 23.
Some parents alleged irregularities and skewed representation for Jammu in the trials, claiming that in some cases overage boys qualified for the tournament. This has prompted J&K Director General Youth Services and Sports Anuradha Gupta to constitute a five-member committee headed by Pankaj Sasan, a physical education lecturer and former national player.
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The panel, which will also include Mukesh Sharma, another national player, and three former domestic cricket players — Jagtar Singh, Arshad Bhat and Paramjeet Singh — will scrutinise score sheets from the inter-district matches that acted as qualifiers for the games.
Of the committee members, Sasan, Sharma and Jagtar Singh are from Jammu.
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“The committee shall scrutinise score sheets and other relevant records to verify if the selection followed rules,” an order from the youth services and sports department read.
The allegations stem from trials held in Budgam in the first week of November. According to sources, the final selection list of 16 players that appeared on social media had only three players from Jammu province, prompting the allegations. Even among the seven reserve players, only one belonged to Jammu, the sources said.
This comes just over a month after a similar outcry over the national football Santosh Trophy prompted Jammu and Kashmir’s Sports Minister Satish Sharma to order an inquiry into team selection. Of the UT’s 20-member team for that trophy, 19 were from Kashmir.
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The “skewed” numbers sparked protests from the BJP and several right-wing organisations and prompted the J&K Sports Council, the government’s sports advisory body, to deny the allegations.
The controversies over player selection in sports assume significance in view of ongoing protests over the admission of students of a particular community into the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence (SMVDIME). Taken together, political observers see these protests as indicating a growing wedge between Jammu and Kashmir since 2019, when Article 370 was abrogated and J&K was divided into two Union Territories.
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah reinstated the Durbar Move — the practice of seasonally moving the civil secretariat between Jammu and Srinagar, suspended in 2021 — last year, hoping it would help bring the two provinces together. However, according to political observers, it remains to be seen whether the gambit has worked.
