Press Trust of India
Mumbai, Oct 4: Lawyer-turned-administrator Shashank Manohar was elected unopposed Sunday as the BCCI president ushering in a new era in the cricket board and ending N Srinivasan’s clout in the cash-rich body. And the rest is history now.
Manohar took over the post at the board’s special general meeting which lasted less than half an hour here. He was the only candidate left in the fray for the election in which the deadline for filing nomination ended Saturday evening.
All the six units of East Zone unanimously proposed Manohar’s candidature for the president’s post, reflecting Srinivasan’s diminishing hold in board’s power politics. In fact, even a few days back, there were only three takers for Manohar in the East – the Cricket Association of Bengal, NCC and the Tripura Cricket Association. But all that changed the moment union minister Arun Jaitley played his cards.
Srinivasan stayed away from the meeting. It was good that he did so. It wouldn’t have been great for him to see that 22 of the 31 affiliated units openly rooting for Manohar. All these years, Srinivasan had implemented the ‘give and take’ policy. ‘Give’ in financial terms and decorative positions. But those that benefitted out of the policy the most however, realised that it would be a folly to back the Tamil Nadu strongman and duly turned turncoat.
The situation wouldn’t have turned so drastic for Srinivasan. It happened because he air-dashed to Nagpur a couple of days back to hold a meeting with Sharad Pawar and that really angered Jaitley. If there is one that Jaitley is allergic about, it is about the Marathi sugar baron acquiring power within the BCCI.
A BCCI by-election needs only one proposer from a zone. However, Manohar got six – all of them from East Zone. Interestingly one of the proposers for Manohar was Dalmiya’s son Avishek, who was representing his family club
National Cricket Club (NCC) in the SGM.
