Rahul Johri convenes selection meeting instead of Chaudhary

NEW DELHI: The BCCI selection committee meeting for the one off Test against Bangladesh was delayed by four hours after joint secretary Amitabh Chaudhary was found ineligible to convene the meeting.

The meeting was supposed to be held at 12 noon but was delayed by four hours as Chaudhary, who was present at the five-star facility, was not allowed as per chief of Committee of Administrators Vinod Rai’s instruction.

It was around 12 noon that Chaudhary was told that he has to wait as he is ineligible to attend the meeting. It was Rahul Johri, the CEO who convened the meeting by video conferencing.

“Amitabh Chaudhary had called a senior selection committee meeting in Delhi today (Tuesday) to select the squad against Bangladesh. Vinod Rai and Co have immediately swung in and barred him from doing anything. The CEO is directly convening the meeting via video conference from Mumbai,” a BCCI source, who was witness to every incident here, said on Tuesday.

All was clearly not well when BCCI mandarins broke for lunch when one of the selectors Sarandeep Singh was not even around. Some of the waiting media members were told that meeting will start at 3 pm but then around 3:30 pm, Sarandeep was seen entering the hotel and he looked clueless about when the meeting will start. Around 4 pm, he went up and joined his colleagues as the meeting started.

Tuesday’s incident proved that Chaudhary is probably not authorised to function as joint secretary and will go to Dubai as BCCI representative only as he has a thorough background knowledge that investment banker Vikram Limaye will be needing for future meetings.

Meanwhile, a day after being appointed as the administrators of the BCCI by the Supreme Court, three of the panel members had their first meeting on Tuesday.

Vinod Rai, former Comptroller and Auditor General of India, former India women’s captain Diana Edulji and banker Vikram Limaye were present at the meeting.