Mumbai, April 25: Indian Premier League commissioner Lalit Modi on Sunday took the bull by the horns
. Having first announced that he would be attending Monday’s emergent meeting of the governing council — called essentially to terminate his tenure —
Mr Modi, in a dramatic post-final speech, openly came out in his own defence at the D.Y. Patil Stadium here, saying there had been no wrongdoing on his part and also that every decision he had taken was collective and endorsed by the governing council.
By then, the Board for Control of Cricket in India had served a suspension notice on Mr Modi, sent by email, though he went a step further at the prize distribution ceremony, making a statement that the IPL was clean, and that he was willing to take “full responsibility” if any norms or rules had been flouted in its functioning.
“I am speaking as the IPL commissioner. I am still captain of the team,” Mr Modi declared.
BCCI bigwigs including president Shashank Manohar, IPL vice-chairman Niranjan Shah and secretary N. Srinivasan — who owns the newly-crowned IPL-3 champions — had incidentally stayed away from the final at Navi Mumbai which the Chennai Super Kings eventually won by 22 runs over the Mumbai Indians.
Earlier, having played hard to get over the last two weeks, Mr Modi, who has almost been ostracised by the BCCI, changed his stance on Sunday afternoon and opted to attend the meeting. The emergent meeting was convened by Mr Srinivasan, who is also chief managing director of the Chennai Super Kings franchisee, India Cements.
However, in a parallel move on Sunday, the top brass of the Board of Control for Cricket in India met to finalise their approach to the IPL governing council meeting. According to sources, Mr Srinivasan shared a 16-page-long “chargesheet” with Mr Manohar, Mr Shah and chief administrative officer Prof. Ratnakar Shetty that lists in great detail all the allegations against Mr Modi.
“Srinivasan has ensured that no important matter escapes the IPL meeting. He’s listed every contentious decision taken by Modi in pointwise manner in his report. That doesn’t give him (Modi) much room to manoeuvre if he shows up tomorrow,” a board official told this newspaper on Sunday.
When Mr Srinivasan first circulated a notice for the meeting, Mr Modi called it illegal, saying as chairman only he had the powers to do so and dared the council to go ahead.
A meeting on Saturday between Mr Pawar and Mr Vijay Mallya, chairman of United Breweries and owner of Royal Challengers Bangalore, assumed significance in the face of the Modi-BCCI standoff though they denied it had anything to do with the IPL.
Till Sunday afternoon it had seemed that Mr Modi, if he were to skip the meeting, would be ousted, but then it has emerged that board president Shashank Manohar has the powers to suspend him and not the governing council as has been widely speculated.
The board’s constitution empowers its disciplinary committee “to inquire into and deal with the matters relating to any act of indiscipline or misconduct or violation of any of the rules and regulations of any player, umpire, team official, administrator, selector or any other person appointed or employed by the BCCI.”
Pending an inquiry, the person would be suspended by the president from “participating in any of the affairs of the board until final adjudication”. The adjudication should be completed within six months.
Ravi Chakravarthy