Azharuddin elected president of HCA
THE FORMER INDIA CAPTAIN GOT 173 VOTES AGAINST HIS OPPONENT PRAKASH CHAND
JAIN’S 73 VOTES
MUMBAI: Mohammad Azharuddin is back in the cricketing fold as the president of the Hyderabad Cricket Association (HCA), 19 years after he was banned for life by the BCCI for his alleged role in the match-fixing scandal.
The former India captain got 173 votes against his opponent Prakash Chand Jain’s 73 votes.
Azharuddin, who always insisted he was innocent, got a reprieve in 2012 when a division bench of the Andhra Pradesh High Court called the BCCI’S life ban illegal. He wanted to contest the HCA election in 2017 as well but his nomination was rejected on technical grounds.
“As a cricketer, who has played at the highest level of the game, I can represent the association in a better way. I would like to ensure that Hyderabad cricket is benefited in a big way. It is much easier than being captain of the Indian team,” said Azharuddin, who played 99 Tests and 334 ODIS for India.
Under his stewardship, India never lost a series on home soil.
The biggest challenge in Azharuddin’s life has been to shrug off his tainted past. After keeping out of the public eye for long, he slowly returned to the mainstream.
He joined the Indian National Congress in February 2009 and the same year he was elected as Member of Parliament from Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh. However, the HCA election tested his nerves.
“I was confident of winning the election but at the same time in an event like this you will always have tense moments. You never know, anything can happen. I fought two general elections but this was different. I’m happy that the club secretaries and cricketers rallied around me and we won the full panel. It is a huge victory,” Azharuddin said.
“We have to work in tandem and go forward for the development of the game.”
Ratnakar Shetty, who was part of the three-member Committee of Administrators, appointed by the High Court of Telangana, in charge of the HCA administration for the last year and a half, said: “I am happy that the election went off well under the former chief election commissioner of India, VS Sampath. Azharuddin is a cricketer after all, and it’s good he has won.”
However, there are people who have doubts about his return to the game in the role of an administrator.
Former CBI special director Ravi Sawani, who investigated the fixing racket in 2000 on the basis of which the BCCI banned Azharuddin, said: “It is not a great development. He was given the benefit of doubt for technical reasons by the Court, not for the lack of evidence. I had conducted the inquiry and submitted the report to the BCCI based on which he was banned.”