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Most with Muthiah

Unless the present scenario changes overnight, A. C. Muthiah will head the Board of Control for Cricket in India for next three years. The cricket administrator-industrialist is expected to succeed Raj Singh Dungarpur at the annual general body meeting of the BCCI, to be held at the Rambagh Palace tomorrow and the day after.

Till a week ago, Muthiah's election was a foregone conclusion because it has been the practice of the BCCI to hand over the presidentship to each of its four zones in turn. Thus, it is now rightfully the turn of the South. However, with the Hyderabad Cricket Association announcing the candidature of former Maharashtra chief minister Manohar Joshi, who is a senior vice-president in the board and president of the Mumbai Cricket Association, for the post, the AGM has assumed added significance.

The Hyderabad move is part of strategy of the group led by former BCCI president I.S. Bindra, who is also the president of the Punjab Cricket Association.

However, present BCCI president Raj Singh Dungarpur, after attending a close door meeting of the group led by Jagmohan Dalmiya, feels there will be no contest and Muthiah will definitely succeed him. He says, if an election is held, he has no doubts that Muthiah will win by a margin of at least seven to eight votes.

When asked about his future plans, Dungarpur, who will complete his tenure as BCCI president tomorrow, remarked that he would "not involve himself in destructive activities being a former president".

''BCCI is a cricket family and it should be run decently," he said.

BCCI treasurer Kishore Rungta said: "Twenty voters out of a total of 31 are already with Muthiah and there is no threat to his candidature."

He said Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Vidharbha, Baroda, CCI, Gujarat, Bengal, NCC, Assam, Bihar, Tripura, Kerala and Tamil Nadu are solidly with the group of Dalmiya, besides they have the vote of Dungarpur. Thus, they needed only one more vote to gain a simple majority.

He also claimed that Saurashtra, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Goa, Hyderabad, Madhya Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir are also supporting the Muthaih group.

Rungta added that the rival group hardly had the support of six units and would require at least ten more votes to unsettle their group.

Meanwhile, none from the Bindra group had arrived till this evening.

UNI