Riding roughshod over a largely muted and scattered opposition, BCCI president N. Srinivasan wrangled an arrangement by which former president Jagmohan Dalmiya will attend to day-to-day affairs of the board while he merely steps aside until the probe into his son-in-law’s betting and fixing shenanigans is complete. On a symbolically dark day of rain clouds in Chennai on Sunday, cricket administrators managed to tie themselves in such knots at the emergency working committee meeting that a master manipulator in the incumbent could have his way of retaining power while giving away his “chair” temporarily.
Asserting that there are no financial, betting or insider trading charges against him — and facts bear that out — Mr Srinivasan refused to tender his resignation. Members who were quibbling over the semantics of “stepping aside” and “stepping down” could extract little from a belligerent BCCI president except his old offer made in Kolkata on the eve of the IPL-6 final to step aside until a three-member panel with two retired judges from the Madras high court and a third member (to be nominated by Mr Arun Jaitley) to probe Gurunath Meiyappan’s role in IPL-6 as team functionary of Chennai Super Kings. Rebellious administrators like Mr Sanjay Jagdale, secretary, and Mr Ajay Shirke, treasurer, have been given a day’s time to withdraw their resignations and return to the fold.
Speaking to a TV channel, Mr Srinivasan projected a “smooth” meeting at which no one, including Inderjit Singh Bindra of the Punjab Cricket Association, had asked for his resignation. Mr Bindra, however, had a different tale to tell when he emerged from the meeting, where he said he had also opposed the choice of Mr Dalmiya as interim chief.
Mr Jaitley, whose name was first proposed for interim chief reportedly by Mr Srinivasan himself, rejected the offer on the grounds that it would be embarrassing for the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha to take such an assignment. It was, however, obvious that the BJP leader had joined hands with the incumbent only to keep Mr Pawar out of the BCCI. It was for such a narrow political consideration that a legal eagle’s brain capable of hammering out a method of cleaning up the game is being denied to the board at this critical hour.
The end result is two master manipulators are together in patching up things after the biggest betting, spot ad match-fixing and insider information-sharing scandal hit Indian cricket in the course of IPL-6.
With political heavyweights like Mr Jaitley (set to become BCCI president-in-waiting in September 2013) and Rajeev Shukla (former IPL commissioner) refusing to consider taking up the task of interim chief, the choice fell on Mr Dalmiya. The war between Mr Sharad Pawar and Mr Srinivasan also ended in the incumbent’s favour by his aligning with Mr Dalmiya, who was responsible once for defeating Mr Pawar’s first attempt to head the BCCI and who has been consistently opposed to the Union agriculture minister.
The new South-East combination has managed to throttle the North-West opposition, which, of course, was largely muted as Mr Jaitley and Mr Shukla refused to take an unequivocal stand. The two senior politicians did not even come to Chennai for the meeting, preferring to participate by videoconference from New Delhi. Adding a note of mystery to the major decision taken on an interim chief, Mr Dalmiya told the media outside the hotel that Mr Srinivasan remains BCCI president.
On rejecting the offer to be interim chief, Mr Jaitley suggested that the names of former presidents Shashank Manohar and Jagmohan Dalmiya be considered. But Mr Srinivasan said anyone who was not a current BCCI member could not be asked to head the organisation, effectively cutting out Mr Manohar, who is considered to be close to Mr Pawar. That narrowed the choice to Mr Dalmiya, president of the Cricket Association of Bengal, who is now saddled with the task of “standing in” for the BCCI president.