Mumbai: Lawyer-turned-administrator Shashank Manohar is all set to be elected unopposed as BCCI President on Sunday, bringing in a new era in the cricket body that was not long ago hit hard by the IPL scandal which saw the end of strongman N Srinivasan’s clout.
Manohar will take over the post at the Board’s Special General meeeting here on Sunday as he was the only candidate left in the fray for the election whose deadline for nomination ended on Saturday.
The election was necessitated by the sudden demise of Jagmohan Dalmiya who had a short term of seven months after his election in March this year. Earlier he was made the interim President when Srinivasan “stepped aside” in the wake of revelations that his son-in-law was involved in betting during the 2013 IPL season.
All the six units of East Zone unanimously proposed Manohar’s candidature for the president’s post, reflecting former chief N Srinivasan’s diminishing hold in Board’s power politics.
With BCCI’s Special General Meeting scheduled on Sunday, Manohar’s annointment to the hot seat is just a mere formality after the scrutiny of the nomination forms showed that all the six East Zone units have separately signed as proposers.
A BCCI by-election needs only one proposer from the zone which is electing the president and Manohar got the nod from all the six associations. Manohar’s was the lone nomination at the end of the 7 pm deadline.
Interestingly, one of the proposers for Manohar was late Jagmohan Dalmiya’s son Avishek, who is representing his family club National Cricket Club (NCC) in the upcoming SGM. Srinivasan will not be attending the meeting with Tamil Nadu Cricket Association being represented by P S Raman.
The others who also proposed Manohar’s name are Sourav Ganguly from Bengal, Sourav Dasgupta from Tripura, Gautam Roy from Assam, Ashirbad Behera of Odisha and Sanjay Singh of Jharkhand State Cricket Association (JSCA).
“All the six units of East Zone separately proposed Manohar’s name to show that they are firmly backing his candidature,” a representative from East said.
Manohar’s earlier stint was three years between 2008-09 and 2010-11.
His annointment also means that N Srinivasan now has little chance of coming back into the BCCI fold till 2017 when the Vidarbha man’s tenure ends.
Manohar has the responsibility to guide the BCCI to its stable self after a troubled era under Tamil Nadu strongman Srinivasan whose tenure was marked by acrimony within and outside the Board’s portals.
The 2013 IPL spot fixing scandal that singed Srinivasan, following his son-in-law and IPL team Chennai Super Kings’s former principal Gurunath Meiyappan being found guilty of betting on the T20 League games, led to the Supreme Court sidelining him from holding the reins of the BCCI. Srinivasan had tried his best to muster enough support for his nominee to take control of the BCCI, including having a surprise meeting with another interested person, Sharad Pawar, at Nagpur recently.
But Pawar’s group members were not keen to have any truck with the TN strongman – who has decided to keep away from the whole rigmarole.
And with another group led by Anurag Thakur also backing Shashank Manohar’s candidature after his meeting Union Finance minister Arun Jaitley in Delhi last week, the road was clear for Manohar. (PTI)
