All talk should have been of Sunday's big Final between the CSK and MI in Kolkata, but a Saturday night dinner hosted for the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) top guns by Bengal Cricket Association chief Jagmohan Dalmiya became the focus of the buzz on Saturday.
With the BCCI boss N Srinivasan having said in Mumbai that he "will not be bulldozed into quitting," speculation was rife about how his colleagues would talk to him at length at this dinner and persuade him to step down in the wake of his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan coming into the illegal betting net.
Srinivasan arrived here at 7 pm in his chartered flight from Mumbai and went straight to the Taj Hotel where the dinner was being hosted.Sources said, the talking would be done by a team of BCCI officials led by Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) president Arun Jaitley and IPl commissioner Rajeev Shukla. That, of course, would be the easier option.
The fixing blues, meanwhile, also reflected at the pre-match Press conference where CSK skipper MS Dhoni failed to turn up. His coach Stephen Fleming came in instead, apologized on the captain's behalf, read a written statement on the spot-fixing issue which asserted that none of the team players was involved in the scam, and proceeded to answer questions "only on the Final tomorrow."
As for the BCCI rulebook, it says that in the absence of the current president due to resignation or death, the senior-most vice-president from the current president's zone would head the Board till the ousted chief's term ends (Srinivasan's term ends in September 2014). That would bring into the picture TNCA senior vice-president Shivlal Yadav as head of the world's strongest cricket body.
If efforts to persuade Srinivasan fail at this customary dinner party, held before every IPl Final, it will be a tough run for his detractors in the Board to get him out.
The process to oust a president is long and arduous. Two-thirds of the State boards have to seek an emergency AGM by petitioning the Board secretary. At this AGM, 30 full-time and affiliate members of the BCCI can vote and Srinivasan can be ousted only if a two-third majority goes against him. It would take just 11 members to vote in his favour for this resolution to fall through.
However, a late night PTI report, quoting unnamed sources suggested that the BCCI officials, who attended the dinner, did not appear to be too keen to press for a change of leadership at the moment.