Manohar set for second innings as BCCI chief

Veteran cricket administrator Shashank Manohar, the lawyer with a “Clean” image and no-nonsense attitude, is set to be elected Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) president unopposed on Sunday.

The 58-year-old will replace Jagmohan Dalmiya, who died in Kolkata on September 20.  
It appears to be a rather smooth transition of power despite controversies, given the factionalism in Indian cricket. The developments over the last fortnight saw Manohar becoming the “consensus candidate”, as he got the backing of the camp of veteran politician and Mumbai Cricket Association president Sharad Pawar as well as BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur.

This will be Manohar’s second innings as BCCI chief. He had headed the board from 2008 to 2011. The soft-spoken Nagpur-based lawyer, who started sports administration with the Vidarbha Cricket Association (VCA), is known for his tough decisions and no-nonsense attitude, besides personal integrity.

Manohar visited the Cricket Centre, the BCCI headquarters at the Wankhede Stadium here, on Saturday afternoon with Pawar and filed the papers.

On Saturday he remained the only person to have filed nomination papers for the post.
He is to be formally announced as elected at the Special General Meeting to be held at the BCCI headquarters.

A BCCI by-election needs only one proposer from the zone which is electing the president, and Manohar got the support from all the six member associations from East Zone — the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB), the National Cricket Club (NCC), the Odisha Cricket Association (OCA), the Jharkhand State Cricket Association (JSCA), the Assam Cricket Association (ACA) and the Tripura Cricket Association (TCA).

Newly-appointed CAB president and former Team India skipper Sourav Ganguly also visited the BCCI headquarters.

One of the proposers for Manohar was late Dalmiya’s son Avishek Dalmiya, representing the NCC. The others who also proposed Manohar’s name are Ganguly, the TCA’s Sourav Dasgupta, the ACA’s Gautam Roy, the OCA’s Ashirbad Behera and the JSCA’s Sanjay Singh.

International Cricket Council chief N Srinivasan will not attend the meeting with the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association, and is being represented by vice-president P S Raman.