As expected Anurag Thakur was unanimously elected as BCCI president, while Ajay Shirke was chosen as General Secretary here on Sunday.
“I feel humbled and honoured to be sitting here, it’s a journey which started 16 years ago,” Thakur said after taking over.
The 41-year-old thus became the second youngest person to take the helm at the world’s richest Cricket Board. Thakur, who quit his general secretary post on Saturday, replaced Shashank Manohar who quit the position recently to become the first ICC’s independent chairman. The Maharashtra Cricket Association chief Shirke expectedly filled the vacant post left by Thakur to become the Secretary.
Senior BCCI vice-president C K Khanna chaired the Special General Meeting (SGM) and announced Thakur’s name for the top job.
Manohar’s exit from the top post barely seven months into his tenure had necessitated the election of the new chief of the world’s richest and most powerful cricket body.
Soon after his resignation, Thakur got the signatures of all six east zone units in his BCCI presidential nomination from yesterday, paving the way for his unanimous choice as the 34th President of the world’s most influential cricket body.
In a show of solidarity yesterday, all the six east units — Cricket Association of Bengal, Assam CA, Tripura CA, NCC and Jharkhand SCA — had signed his nomination papers even though the rules required only one unit to nominate the name of the presidential candidate. It was the East zone’s turn this time.
The BJP MP from Hamirpur in Himachal Pradesh will be taking over the reins of the embattled Board in rather tough times as the BCCI is facing heat from the Supreme Court to implement the Justice R M lodha Committee’s recommendations for sweeping reforms.
Thakur, incidentally, will go into the books as the first first-class cricketer to turn BCCI president after Raj Singh Dungarpur ended his tenure in 1998-99.
Although cricket legend Sunil Gavaskar had held the post jointly with another Test cricketer Shivlal Yadav briefly, specifically in charge of IPl affairs, that had been done at the direction of the Supreme Court which ordered then President N Srinivasan to step aside in the wake of the 2013 IPl betting and spot-fixing scandal.
Thakur is also the third person backed by East Zone to be elected to the top post during the 2014-2017 period. Jagmohan Dalmiya, who was the consensus candidate after Srinivasan’s exit, died in office last year and Manohar took over in October, 2015.
BHA WANTS FUll MEMBERSHIP
Bihar Cricket Association (BHA), now an associate member of BCCI, has asked the Board to grant it full membership at the earliest.
“We met newly elected BCCI President Anurag Thakurji and have requested him to grant full membership to Bihar Cricket Association. He has promised to look into the matter”, said the association secretary M Tiwary here.
No cricket body from the state had been granted BCCI membership after the state got bifurcated into Bihar and Jharkhand because of rival associations claiming to be the rightful custodians of cricket in state.