N Srinivasan’s daughter, Rupa Gurunath to head TNCA

Former BCCI chairperson N Srinivasan’s stranglehold over cricket in the state would continue with the election of his daughter Rupa Gurunath as the first woman President of the powerful Tamil Nadu Cricket Association (TNCA) on Thursday.

Rupa Gurunath, whose husband Gurunath Meiyappan was named and arrested in the 2013 IPL spot-fixing scandal that eventually led to banning of the Chennai Super Kings IPL team owned by her father, was unanimously elected as the President of the TNCA.

She succeeds her father Srinivasan, owner of India Cements Group that owns Chennai Super Kings, who headed the TNCA for 15 years from 2002 to 2017. He had stepped down following the recommendations submitted by the Justice Lodha Committee to reform cricket in the country and the powerful body had remained headless for the past two years.

With her election, Rupa Gurunath becomes the first woman to head a state-level cricket association in the country and would represent the TNCA at the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

The entire set of office-bearers nominated by Rupa Gurunath’s team were elected unanimously. R.S. Ramaswamy from Salem will be the secretary of the TNCA, while K A Shankar will be its joint secretary.

After taking over as TNCA chief, the new President said her immediate priorities are to finalise the Lease Agreement with the Government and opening three stands at the M A Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai.

“TNCA has zero-tolerance for any form of corruption and TNCA will take appropriate action on any such issues,” she said. TNCA is one of the richest cricket bodies in the country and is a very influential association.

Her comments on corruption assume significance since her election comes close on the heels of a probe by BCCI into serious allegations of a possible betting racket during the fourth season of Tamil Nadu Premier League that ended on August 15.

Rupa Gurunath was inducted into the Board of India Cements in September 2007 and became a wholetime director in March 2010.