Shashank Manohar was appointed President of BCCI for the second time. His appointment was ratified in the Special General Meeting of the BCCI in Mumbai on Sunday.
This will be Manohar’s second stint as BCCI President, having taken over from Sharad Pawar in 2008/09. It lasted for three years and it ended in 2011 when N. Srinivasan was appointed as the BCCI President.
However, Srinivasan’s tenure was marred by the Indian Premier League scandal of 2013 and he “stepped aside” in the wake of revelations that his son-in-law, Gurunath Meiyappan, was involved in betting. Manohar was made the interim president when Srinivasan stepped aside and Jagmohan Dalmiya made a spectacular comeback as president in March 2015.
However, the death of Dalmiya brought about an intense power struggle in the BCCI. Many pitted Srinivasan to come back into the fold but two factors changed the scenario.
First, Srinivasan’s camp lost steam after Vidarbha’s Manohar and Ajay Shirke of Maharashtra, both Pawar confidants, objected to a compromise with the beleaguered Tamil Nadu Cricket Association boss.
Second, Manohar, a senior Nagpur lawyer, was deemed as an individual who had a clean image and he was backed by the Anurag Thakur camp. Manohar was also accepted by the majority of East Zone units, who were given a chance to propose a presidential candidate till 2017. It was reported that Sourav Ganguly, the newly-elected president of Cricket Association of Bengal, would propose Manohar’s name and either Tripura or Assam could second.
Manohar’s appointment as BCCI President was a mere formality before the SGM as he enjoyed the support of several major BCCI factions. He emerged as a consensus candidate after he was reportedly backed by the Anurag Thakur-Arun Jaitley (BJP) faction.