Global governing bodies of different sports set age categories for their ranking tournaments which are followed by every national federation.

The national federations also formulate by-laws in line with their governing body to promote and facilitate players.

All four racket sports (tennis, squash, table tennis and badminton) hold ranking tournaments (as per the age-counting date of births of participants) and they are a mixture of even and odd age category events for juniors.

Many sports federations including boxing, wrestling, and weightlifting use weight and age categories in their championships while martial arts use age categories and belt grading system for their ranking events.

Fencing and karate use terms of cadet, under-16, under-19 for juniors and then veterans for above 40. Besides these age categories, all these sports have open categories having minimum age restrictions and above that everyone can compete even if she/he is 50 plus.

The International Tennis Federation has also formulated various by-laws for international ranking tournaments like Grand Slams, Challengers, Futures, and Davis Cup while for juniors it has age categories like under-18, under-16, under-14, under-12 and for Masters (Seniors) ITF has categories like 30 plus, 35 plus, 40 plus, and 45 plus.

Pakistan Tennis Federation in line with these categories issues national rankings with even-number age categories and odd numbers for masters’ categories. The provincial units of PTF also follow even-number age categories for their local and provincial tournaments.

However, only Sindh has been using odd-number age categories (u-17, u-15, u-13, etc.) for its provincial and local ranking tournaments for the last 20 or more years.

This strategy has been quite effective and fruitful for developing and grooming young players. For example, we groom players in the under-15 category all year and when they achieve higher levels at the end of the year (in the months of November/December) they are ready for under-16 national tournaments and they are also eligible for national teams for Junior Davis Cup.

But if we groom under-16 players and at the end of the year when they achieve a higher level they become ineligible both for the trials for international events and for national tournaments as they turn 17.

Similarly, if under-12 and under-14 category players are groomed in their age categories they become ineligible at the end of the year as they turn 13 and 15.

Therefore, this is the best and logical development strategy to groom players in odd year age categories at home and prepare them for international even-year age category events where they will be eligible.

Most importantly, all over the world (as you can see in players’ profiles at ITF website) these players leave playing juniors at the age of 16 and start playing professional circuit.

We in Pakistan should follow odd-years age categories to compel junior players to leave the juniors events at the age of 17 (if we abolish the junior 18 category). This way we would be developing our juniors better by pushing them to leave the junior circuit.

Unfortunately, in Pakistan a huge number of players in most of the sports lie about their age. Cricket is on the top and tennis is no exception. Thus, by reintroducing under-17 events we will compel age cheats to leave junior events and prove their mettle in open professional events.

The PTF introduced odd-year age categories sometime back and it remained operational for three years but due to the influence of a father of a junior player who wished to have one more year for his son to remain Pakistan number one in juniors PTF reverted to even-year age categories.

I feel that for the development and grooming of players and preparing them for even-year age category international tournaments we should reintroduce odd- years age category tournaments in Pakistan.

– The writer is the Senior Vice President of Sindh Tennis Association.