Shashank Manohar’s clean-up drive sees Pawar play return, Shastri, Binny face axe

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Former BCCI and ICC president Sharad Pawar with BCCI president Shashank Manohar
Former BCCI and ICC president Sharad Pawar with BCCI president Shashank Manohar

 

When Shashank Manohar returned for his second term  as BCCI president as a consensus candidate of the NCP supremo and former BCCI and ICC president Sharad Pawar and Union Finance Minister, and senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley factions, Manohar was expected to take take tough decisions, and true to his word, he has gone ahead and done that.

First,  he removed former BCCI president and ICC chairman N Srinvasan and took over that role himself till the end of term, in June 2016. Then, interestingly, he made another appointment that surprised many. He brought on board, the NCP supremo and former BCCI and ICC president Sharad Pawar, and made him additional director.  While Manohar is going to be BCCI’s representative in the ICC as far as the ICC chairman-ship is concerned, it means that Pawar, who is currently the MCA president, will attend all the ICC meetings as and when Manohar unable to fulfill his day to day responsibilities of running the board.

Manohar has come out with a plan to resolve the conflict of interest issue at all levels within the BCCI. For this, the BCCI has also appointed an ombudsman in the form of Justice (Retd) AP Shah to deal with all conflict of interest complaints.

A member of the 1983 World cup winning team Roger Binny, national selector from the south zone, has been removed, and he has been  replaced by former India wicket- keeper MSK Prasad from Andhra Pradesh. The reason behind Binny’s conflict of interest is his son, Stuart, playing in the national team.  BCCI felt one should avoid having a selector who’s son plays for team India, which could lead biased selection when choosing members of the team.

Another  senior selection committee member, who was removed from his position, was Rajinder Singh Hans. Hans has been replaced by former India batsman Gagan Khoda.

Another point was that cricketers on the payroll of the BCCI or holding contracts with BCCI shall not be on any BCCI committees, including the IPL Governing Council. This directly applied to  Ravi Shastri who is on the payrolls of the BCCI since he is the Team India Director. He has thus been removed from the IPL Governing Council.

Among other key decisions taken at the board meeting was CAB president and former India skipper Sourav Ganguly replacing Anil Kumble as the chairman of the board’s technical committee and the retention of Rajeev Shukla as IPL chairman. Ganguly was give a choice to between commentary or the BCCI post , Ganguly opted for the BCCI post.

There was speculation that Shukla might be replaced by Ajay Shirke of the MCA, another Pawar loyalist, but Shukla managed to hold on to his post.

The IPL Governing Council too has been reduced to 5 members, from the initial 13. It now consists of, IPL chairman Rajeev Shukla, along with, Ajay Shirke, MP Pandove, Joytiraditya Scindia and  Sourav Ganguly

Few days before the AGM, Sundar Raman, the IPL COO, had resigned after his role came under the scanner for the IPL spot-fixing scandal in 2013, being probed by the Lodha committee as well  as the Mudgal committees.  Furthermore, the Board,  in the AGM, gave Test status to Visakhapatnam, Ranchi, Indore, Pune, Dharamsala and Rajkot.

 

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