Vijay Patil elected Mumbai Cricket Association prez

Education baron Vijay Patil and Sanjay Naik were on Friday elected unopposed as president and secretary respectively of the Mumbai Cricket Association here.

The president, vice-president and secretary were elected unopposed while polls were held for the posts of treasurer, joint secretary and nine members of the Apex Council.

Amol Kale was elected as the vice-president.

Vijay Patil is the son of former Governor and Congress politician Dr DY Patil.

Shahalam Shaikh was chosen as joint secretary, defeating Sangam Lad by 196 to 121 votes, while Jagdish Achrekar was elected as the treasurer in the contest against Mayank Khanwala as the results were announced by MCA electoral officer D N Choudhary.

Prof (Dr) Unmesh Khanvilkar (241 votes), Ajinkya Naik (201 votes), Gaurav Payyade (180 votes), Vihang Sarnaik (165 votes), Abhay Hadap (160 votes), Kaushik Godbole (157 votes), Amit Dani (144 votes), Nadim Memon (140 votes) and Khodadad Y (133 votes) were elected as the members of the Apex Council.

Later, Patil announced that the Managing Committee unanimously decided to nominate Naik as the MCA nominee for the BCCI polls to be held on October 23.

"The principal focus of our administration is to make sure that cricket becomes the centre point of all the things we do in this association. We will try to make sure that we will have the right infrastructure in place in order to create a great team,” Patil told reporters after the first meeting of the council.

"Another area we want to keenly follow and pursue is talent identification because that is something that needs to be done in a systematic way. We will be consulting with cricketers in order to make sure that we carry out this talent identification so that good players come out of the Mumbai cricketing system," he said.

Patil said the council will discuss all the areas that need improvement and that responsibility will be entrusted in the hands of cricketers only.

Asked whether Mumbai should be on BCCI's Apex Council, Patil said, "Absolutely, I would want a representative of Mumbai to feature on Apex Council but as I said the committee has just been constituted and that is a matter of discussion and deliberation with all concerned individuals."

Patil said there has to be a "pragmatic and practical" approach to the issue of conflict of interests.

Earlier, the voting for the polls started at 8 am at the MCA lounge at the Wankhede Stadium and among the early voters were cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar and former India players Sandeep Patil, Sameer Dighe, Vinod Kambli, Pravin Amre, Sanjay Bangar, Ramesh Powar, Nilesh Kulkarni.

Former India skipper Dilip Vengsarkar, Umesh Kulkarni, Sudhir Naik and veteran Mumbai off-spinner Milind Rege were among those who also cast their votes.

This is the first time that international cricketers have been given voting rights in the state association polls.

"Everyone has turned up (to vote) for the interest of Mumbai Cricket Association and whatever Mumbai has been able to achieve in the past so many years...that should continue," Tendulkar said after casting his vote.