SRINIVASAN AXED
Former BCCI president N. Srinivasan’s hold on Indian cricket virtually ended on Monday when he was removed as ICC Chairman during the BCCI’s 86th annual general meeting. Shashank Manohar, who was recently elected president in place of the late Jagmohan Dalmiya, will take the place the Chennai strongman has now to vacate in ICC. The move to oust Srinivasan, who was the virtual dictator of Indian cricket when he was the president, received a near unanimous approval of all the board members at the meeting held in Mumbai on Monday.
“The BCCI representative to ICC will be Shashank Manohar and by virtue of being the board’s representative to the ICC he will take over as the ICC chairman,” said BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur.
The two-year ICC tenure of Srinivasan, who was ousted as BCCI chief earlier this year after the Supreme Court intervened and refused to allow him to contest again for the president’s post due to conflict of interest, would have been the head of world cricket till June 2016. Not only will Manohar replace him at ICC but also, if he is unavailable for any reason to attend an ICC meeting, it would be former BCCI president and ICC chairman Sharad Pawar who will represent BCCI.
The conflict of interest was the major issue on which Srinivasan was found way short of the ideal. As owner of Chennai Super Kings by virtue of being head of India Cements, the controversial cricket administrator attracted severe criticism and faced several lawsuits over his continuing to be associated with BCCI as administrator, particularly after his son-in-law who was ‘Team Principal’ of CSK was found betting on IPL matches involving his own team, sometimes even placing bets against the team. Srinivasan, however, continues as President of TNCA.
To address the issues of conflict of interest the Board also decided to drop Indian Team Director Ravi Shastri from the IPL Governing Council and axe Roger Binny from the selection panel.
Besides Binny, Rajinder Singh Hans was also dropped as selector. Former Indian cricketers MSK Prasad and Gagan Khoda respectively replaced them in the five-member committee headed by Sandeep Patil.