The veteran cricket administrator died doing what he loved best: running the Indian cricket board. Credited with turning the gentleman's game into a global sport of big money and a reach well beyond its traditional bastions, Dalmiya's death was widely mourned.
On 17 September 2015, he suffered a massive cardiac arrest and was admitted to the BM Birla Hospital in Kolkata. He remained in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and a five-member medical board was set up for his treatment. He died on 20 September 2015 after he had also undergone a coronary angiography. The former BCCI and ICC president died on September 20, 2015, three days after being hospitalised following a cardiac arrest.
Dalmiya, 75, played a pivotal role in recognising and exploring the game's potential in India and around the world during a career that lasted 36 years. If Australian television magnate Kerry Packer led the first wave of cricket's transformation, Dalmiya, a businessman from Kolkata brought about the second. He took part in the first electoral contest for an ICC chairmanship in 1996. Dalmiya also known as "Jaggu Dada" beat Australian Malcolm Gray to the job but failed to acquire the two-thirds majority among the Test-playing members required by the ICC's rules.
No consensus could be arrived at but, a year later, Dalmiya worked the numbers and was elected the first president of the ICC, the first Asian administrator in the role and the first non-cricketer.
The man from Bengal, who had the courage to take cricket to Sri lanka during its terror-ridden days (1996), was first to invite South Africa on a cricket tour after the end of the apartheid ban. He and Inderjit Singh Bindra, another former BCCI president, are credited with hosting of the World Cup in 1987 and 1996 in the subcontinent.
Sharad Pawar in 2005 accused Dalmiya of embezzlement of money taken to host the World Cup. He was thus removed from the body in 2006 and also from Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB). However, Dalmiya fought back for his post in 2008 and won the elections.
Dalmiya became the BCCI president in 2001 and it was during his term that the first contracts were given out to Indian cricketers in 2003 and, in 2004, pensions to former Test players and umpires.
In 2015, Dalmiya was installed as president for his second spell at the body after a gap of 10 years.
Dalmiya replaced N Srinivasan, the then president of the BCCI facing allegations of massive corruption, which forced even India's Supreme Court to step in. Dalmiya emerged as the consensus candidate between various factions in BCCI when elections were held.
Sourav Ganguly, fondly known as Dada, was a cricketer whom Dalmiya supported a lot. Ganguly made his deview when Jaggu da was the president of the Indian board and Sourav was constantly backed up by him. Be it his bad personal performances or selecting a player of his choice as the captain of the team, Dalmiya always supported Ganguly in all his decisions.
An emotional Ganguly replaced Dalmiya as the Cricket Association of Bengal's President after his sad demise, said on CAB's condolence meeting "The one thing that would remain forever in my mind was people remembered him fondly wherever I went across the world. You don't always remain in power, that's the law of nature. He was not the president always but despite that wherever I went, be it New Zealand, the West Indies, England or Pakistan everybody sent him 'salaam'."
Dalmiya’s son Abhishek was named as CAB’s joint-secretary.
You just don't get named among the top six sports executives in the world for nothing — such was the excellence of Jagmohan Dalmiya.