New Delhi: A debate has been raging in the country over Sourav Ganguly being forced to relinquish the BCCI president’s chair. Rumours are flying thick and fast that when some senior officials of the BCCI met a couple of days back Sourav Ganguly had to face a lot of criticism from other office-bearers. However, BCCI’s outgoing treasurer and next IPL governing council chairman Arun Dhumal cleared the air Friday over Ganguly not getting another term as board president. He said ‘nobody spoke a word’ against the former India captain.
The next set of BCCI office-bearers have filed their nomination and will be elected unopposed October 18.
World Cup winner Roger Binny will replace Ganguly as the president, Jay Shah will remain the secretary, Rajeev Shukla will get another term as vice-president, Ashish Shelar will be the new treasurer and Devaijit Saikia the new joint secretary.
Dhumal said Ganguly was party to all the decisions made before the nominations were filed. “There has been no BCCI president who has served for more than three years in independent India. All this media speculation about Dada being told or a few members were against him, they are all baseless,” Dhumal said.
“Nobody spoke a word against him. All the Board members were extremely happy and satisfied with the entire team and how BCCI was run in the last three years despite the challenges posed by Covid-19. Dada has had a very distinguished career as an India captain, one of the best ever leaders. As an administrator Ganguly took the entire team along and we worked as one team,” he added.
Dhumal also went on to say that he would not have been part of the new team had Ganguly accepted the IPL chairmanship. Ganguly did not take the offer and now Dhumal will replace Brijesh Patel as the next IPL chairman.
“Dada (Ganguly) was there along with Roger and the new set of people who went to file the nomination. Everything was discussed and Dada was also spoken to. He was offered IPL chairmanship, else Roger would never have had a chance, he is 67 (age limit being 70),” Dhumal pointed out.
“He (Binny) has been a World Cup winner for us and that was the view of the house. If Dada accepted IPL chairmanship, I would have been out. And I would have been okay with that. Roger is a great addition keeping in mind the ODI World Cup at home next year,” added Dhumal.
Dhumal said the high point of his tenure as BCCI treasurer was two new IPL teams fetching more than Rs 12,000 crore and the IPL media rights a staggering Rs 48390 crore for the next five years. “We followed the most transparent bidding process. Even those who could not buy teams appreciated it,” he said.
Dhumal was also asked about the new dispensation. “Out of the five officer-bearers three are new ones including the president, joint secretary and treasurer. This was after discussion with all the members. It is also about maintaining a balance and grooming new people for the future so that the board can run efficiently going forward. If the entire set of office-bearers continued then nobody could be trained. It is a much smaller body now (after change of constitution),” Dhumal said.
Dhumal also insisted that there was no politics behind Ganguly’s exit. “There is no truth to that. People may have different ideologies as we live in a democracy. When it comes to BCCI everyone’s focus is on how to take Indian cricket forward,” he signed off.
