Srini to attend BCCI meet

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N. Srinivasan

Tuesday’s Bombay High Court order dismissing as “illegal” a report prepared by the cricket control board’s two-member commission notwithstanding, sidelined BCCI president N. Srinivasan’ has said he will attend a scheduled meeting here on Friday.

Srinivasan was his defiant self ahead of Friday’s BCCI working committee and IPL governing council meeting here, telling the Press Trust of India, “I will be attending the meeting in New Delhi on August 2,” but it is clear that the order passed by justices S.J. Vazifdar and M.S. Sonak on the day has shaken the Board.
Coming as it does on the heels of Monday’s furious reactions to the open-handed clean chit handed out by former Madras High Court justices T. Jayaram Chouta and R. Balasubramanian, BCCI officials are striking a note of caution despite their sidelined president’s brazen stance.
Said stand-n BCCI chief Dalmiya, “We will wait for the judgement to come into our hands before deciding our next step.”
Others were more pessimistic. “It will be now very difficult for Srinivasan to come back as BCCI president. We will have to sit and chalk out the future course of action,” a senior Board official said, adding, they would now consider what steps to take at the scheduled working committee meeting here this Friday.
“Since the meeting has already been convened, it may go ahead and these matters could be discussed there.”
Reports suggested that even if Dalmiya continued in the chair, Srinivasan could attend as a representative of the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association, which is a permanent member of the Board’s working committee.
Justices Vazifdar and Sonak on the day said the BCCI-constituted panel go into allegations of spot-fixing during IPL-6 was “illegal and unconstitutional. They also asked the Board to form a new panel to investigate the issue correctly in response to a public interest litigation filed by the Cricket Association of Bihar.
On Monday, it seemed that since former justices Chouta and Balasumbamaniam had cleared Srinivasan’s franchise Chennai Super Kings, his son-in-law and team principal Gurunath Meiyappan and Rajasthan Royals owner Raj Kundra of charges of betting, the BCCI strongman would return to the chair at the Delhi meeting.
Now, it appears that Srinivasan re-accession will not be all that easy, particularly since the outrage greeting Monday’s development had spread to the government as well.
The petition in the Bombay High Court, filed on June 21 by BCA and its secretary Aditya Verma, alleged blatant bias by Srinivasan, vice-chairman and managing director of CSK owners India Cements.
The PIL asked the court to direct the BCCI to recall its order constituting the probe panel and to form a panel of retired judges to hold a fresh inquiry against Meiyappan, Kundra and the Rajasthan Royals, three of whose players were on Tuesday named in a Delhi Police chargesheet into the spot-fixing scandal.
India pacer S. Sreesanth, Royals team mates Ajit Chandila and Ankeet Chavan, former RR seamer Amit Singh and 11 bookies, was arrested for the alleged spot-fixing.
The first three had their contracts terminated by their franchise, who also lodged a criminal complaint against them.