Shashank Manohar, who took over as the 36th president of the BCCI, is known for his integrity and regains control of the country’s richest sporting body at a time when cricket’s image has been tarnished by the spot-fixing scandal and intense factionalism.
A shrewd tactician and someone who knows implications of any policy decision like the back of his hand, Manohar has been a trouble-shooter since 2005, when he became the vice- president and ‘Man-Friday’ to Sharad Pawar, who became the president that year.
Once he was through in 2011 with his first presidential tenure, Manohar stepped away from the limelight, rarely voicing his opinion on cricketing matters until the spot- fixing scandal broke in 2013.
From then, Manohar and N Srinivasan became adversaries with the former sticking to the principles that need to be followed urging the Tamil Nadu strongman to relinquish his post. Srinivasan, on his part, kept claiming that it was a case of pure vendetta.
In a Cricket Board riddled by scandals, factionalism, money-power and heavy politicking, the need of the hour was a man, whose image could restore the faith and credibility of the sporting body whose revenues runs into millions of dollars.
While mulling on a replacement for Dalmiya, the majority of the influential decision-makers in the BCCI including Finance Minister Arun Jaitley could come up with only one name that could be befitting to the stature of a body like the BCCI and that was Manohar.
When IPl spot-fixing scandal broke in 2013, it was Manohar, who was the original whistleblower as he demanded Srinivasan’s resignation urging him to take moral responsibility of his son-in-law’s actions.
The only two aspects where he has been criticised are his silence when Srinivasan as the treasurer of BCCI was allowed to bid for an IPl team in 2007-08. Manohar had later said that the amendment was done not for Srinivasan but for the then DDCA chief Arun Jaitley.