N Srinivasan was on Monday dethroned as the ICC Chairman after the BCCI decided to recall him and nominate its recently-elected Shashank Manohar as the chief.
The decision to remove Srinivasan was taken at the AGM here. The tenure of Srinivasan, who took over in June last year, was to end next year in the same month and the remainder of the term would be completed by Manohar as it is India’s turn to hold top position.
“The BCCI representative to the ICC would be Shashank Manohar, he will take over as ICC Chairman,” Cricket Board secretary Anurag Thakur told reporters after the resolution favouring replacing Srinivasan with Manohar was passed at the AGM held at headquarters here.
In case, Manohar cannot attend the ICC meetings, Sharad Pawar will be India’s representative.
“There is a system in ICC that every country has to nominate an alternative director. So Pawar would be nominated as the alternate director,” Manohar, who was elected president of the BCCI on Oct 4, said.
Operation clean-up begins
Chairing his first AGM since taking over last month, BCCI president Shashank Manohar led the Board into a new era by persuading the members to address the issues of conflict of interest and unanimously accept the appointment of a retired judge as Ombudsman.
The Board also decided to trim some of its sub- committees, drop Indian Team Director Ravi Shastri from the IPl Governing Council and axe Roger Binny from the selection panel to negate the perceived conflict of interest. Besides, former captain Sourav Ganguly was appointed Chairman of Technical Committee, replacing Anil Kumble.
“Today at the annual general body meeting of the Board, all the members of the Board were unanimous in their approach and were interested in seeing that the Board functions in the most transparent manner,” Manohar said.
“Contrary to the expectations of the media, the members unanimously approved the rules with regards to conflict of interest, they also unanimously approved the amendments to the constitution that everybody spoke in that meeting in favour of a clean and transparent Board,” Manohar said.
The Board appointed former Andhra and India stumper M S K Prasad (South) and ex-India and Rajasthan opener Gagan Khoda as replacements for Hans and Binny in the selection panel.
The BCCI also accorded Test status to six new venues: Visakhapatnam, Ranchi, Indore, Pune, Dharamsala, and Rajkot — all of which are ICC-approved venues.
“The Board granted Test status to Pune, Vizag, Ranchi, Rajkot, Indore and Dharamsala because next year we are going to have about 12 Test matches in India and each stadium has all the facilities of hosting international games.
“With regard to conflict of interest there is no change. With regards to the amendments pertaining to one clause in the IPl GC, on whether we should have three independent persons from outside, that was deferred because people wanted to further deliberate on that issue. Everything else was accepted.”
“The Ombudsman appointed by Board is Justice A P Shah who would look into complaints of conflict of interest. Somebody has to take complaint to the Board, the Board would forward it because Board has appointed him.”
Besides, the BCCI decided to retain Rajeev Shukla as the Chairman of the IPl Governing Council, which also comprise Jyotiraditya Scindia, MP Pandove, Ajay Shirke and Ganguly.
The apex court-appointed panel had suspended CSK and RR for two years for their officials’ involvement in the scandal. Manohar said an auction for two new teams would be held soon.
“For present, Board is internally looking into IPl matters, if required we will hire somebody. IMG has been paid `28 crore by Board and its primary responsibility is to run IPl. We have spoken to them and told them it’s their responsibility to run the show. We are going to have a draft auction as far as two new teams are concerned and we will allow five players each,” Manohar said.