NEWS
OTHER SPORTS
DIARY
PEOPLE
MATCH REPORTS
SLIDE SHOW
ARCHIVES

Storm signals over Jaipur as BCCI meets

Raj Singh Dungarpur and Jaywant Lele, president and secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, arrived in Jaipur for the annual general body meeting of the BCCI slated for September 21 and 22.

Dungapur is at the end of his tenure, and the identity of his successor is just one of the issues that promises to make the upcoming AGM a stormy affair.

The tradition of the BCCI has been for the four zones to get the president-ship in turns. As per this precedent, it is now the turn of South Zone, and industralist and cricket-administrator A C Muthiah, who has besides the backing of the powerful Jagmohan Dalmiya and his group of henchmen, has been put forward as the heir apparent.

However, over the last 10 days, a power struggle has developed with the name of former Maharashtra Chief Minister and Mumbai Cricket Association chief Manohar Joshi emerging as a contender for what, till then, was predicted to be a one-horse race.

The emergence of Joshi's candidature owes to the long-standing rivalry between Dalmiya and former board president Inderjit Singh Bindra (see interview, elsewhere in this issue). Bindra and Dalmiya, who were president and secretary of the BCCI respectively till they fell out around the time Dalmiya contested for the post of ICC chairman, have been at loggerheads for quite a while now. Dalmiya, who has patronage to dispense -- the board, after all, finalises the venues for the various Tests and ODIs on Indian soil, and Dalmiya calls all the shots here -- had marginalised Bindra quite effectively these last couple of years. But Bindra's campaign against Dalmiya got a fresh lease of life lately, when the Andhra Pradesh Cricket Association, aggrieved by various slights at the hands of the ruling clique, decided to back the Bindra faction.

It is therefore likely that the APCA will propose Joshi's name, and the Hyderabad Cricket Association, among others, is likely to back the candidature.

Interestingly, the board meeting was originally scheduled for Mumbai, and later shifted to Jaipur once the name of Joshi began to emerge as a contender -- an obvious bid to take the meeting away from Joshi's sphere of influence.

It will be recalled that two years ago, Chennai witnessed the worst ever board meeting, when the Bindra and Dalmiya factions went head to head and the meeting had to be abandoned after unsavoury scenes. Subsequently, the meeting was called again, and for the first time in the board's history, political figures and power brokers ranging from P Chidambaram (through his lawyer-wife) and Chandraswami were openly involved in the politicking.

Other contentious items on the agenda include the tabling of accounts, to be presented by treasurer Kishore Rungta -- whose brother and Rajasthan Cricket Association chief Purushottam Rungta is, just incidentally, hosting a dinner for the delegates this evening. The Rungta family is one of the major power centres in Indian cricket, and is closely linked with the Dalmiya group -- it will be recalled that the third brother, Kishen, was chairman of the national selectors not so long ago. Simultaneously, the board will also pass the budget for the next year.

Another controversy is brewing over the performance of the national selectors. In fact, the Bindra group and allied local associations are expected to make the selection committee's non-performance their main plank, in the onslaught against the Dalmiya group.

The dissident group will thus target the selection committee for its numerous faux pas before and during the World Cup. Another handle that will be used to hit the selection committee with is the Mithun Minhas affair. It will be recalled that while the Indian team was in Singapore, both Lele and chairman of selectors Wadekar was quoted in a section of the press as indicating that Minhas, a player who does not even regularly feature in the Delhi team, will be picked for India A, for the tour of Los Angeles.

Taking the media reports at face value, Minhas turned up in Delhi for the pre-tour coaching camp -- and suddenly discovered that he had been replaced in the official list by Ashish Nehra.

The substitution occured following intense pressure by the other four selectors, who argued that Lele and Wadekar had no business picking players without consulting with them. This tendency of Wadekar and Lele to do their own thing, and to run rough-shod over due process, eliminating the consultative element in team selection altogether, has struck a sore nerve with the selectors, who are up in arms against the chairman.

Wadekar, thus, is at this point neither here nor there. The other four selectors are united against him. The dissident associations, led by AP and Hyderabad, have decided to target him. And the Dalmiya faction finds him an embarassment -- while Dalmiya and his group are reluctant to hang Lele out to dry, they find in Wadekar a handy scapegoat, and sources indicate that if the board meeting does turn stormy on this issue, they will save Lele by hanging Wadekar out to dry.

While the meeting is officially slated to take place tomorrow and the day after, the real crux time is late this evening. The bigwigs have all assembled, with Muthiah and Dalmiya flying in this morning to join Dungarpur and Lele, while Bindra too is present with his own support group.

The Rungta dinner this evening is merely the prelude. Once that is over, the two factions are expected to spend the rest of the night playing the numbers game, lining up support for and against. The politicking, and bargaining, will be intense and by the time the board actually meets tomorrow, most of the key decisions would have been taken behind the scenes.