K'taka cricket association poll today

After weeks of accusations and counter-accusations, the day is finally upon us. On Sunday, at the Annual General Body Meeting (AGM), 1,827 voters will decide who should hold the reins of the Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) for the next three years.

In a press conference about a month and a half ago and with former India skipper Rahul Dravid beside them, president Anil Kumble and secretary Javagal Srinath took everyone by surprise by announcing that they would not seek re-election. In the same breath, however, they said that merely deciding not to contest didn’t mean they were “going away”. They felt that it was time for new faces and fresh ideas.

The murmurs that the two stalwarts of Indian cricket were fielding a team of their own became a reality.

Srinath, in a meet the press programme early this month, disclosed that Sadananda Maiya, the current vice-president, would lead a team against Srikantadatta Narasimharaja Wadiyar-Brijesh Patel combine. Maiya is pitted against Wadiyar for the post of president, while A V Jayaprakash, a former ICC umpire, is the secretary candidate taking on Brijesh.

Both Srinath and Kumble, who have faced various allegations from the rival camp, had challenged Brijesh for a public debate, while the latter firmly maintained that KSCA matters are not for public consumption and that the AGM was the right forum to ask questions and seek answers.

It is still unclear as to how Wadiyar and Patel, who had fought a bitter battle in 2007, patched up and put up a united front in their bid to reclaim the power they shared for three years and not necessarily in a cordial atmosphere.

In the only press conference they have held in the run-up to the elections, both Wadiyar and Patel maintained that there was no bad blood between them and that their only purpose of joining hands was to improve the standard of cricket in Karnataka and the development of infrastructure.

It is the same theme that Team Maiya is hoping to cash in on. There’s no denying that infrastructure received a massive boost in the last three years. Besides grounds in Mysore, Hubli, Shimoga, Chikmagalur and Belgaum, the RC-KSCA Cricket Academy centres came up across the state, catering to the needs of 2,500 aspirants from mofussil areas.