BCCI president: High-power meeting in capital on 20 Sep holds the key

The suspense over the choice of the next president of the BCCI, the richest cricket body of the world, will be over soon. While the AGM on 28 September will deliver a final seal of approval on the candidate who will take over the top job from Roger Binny, it’s not really a secret that the powers that be in the Union government will play a key role in the choice.

As the deadline for the revision of electoral rolls ends on Friday evening, the names of former incumbent Sourav Ganguly and Harbhajan Singh have been confirmed as high-profile former cricketers who will represent their respective state boards at the AGM. 'Dada' Ganguly, set to take fresh guard as president of the Cricket Association of Bengal on Monday, will represent Bengal while the Punjab offspinner — a protégé of Ganguly's during the latter's captaincy — will represent Punjab Cricket Association.

Both have been linked to the top job, while another former cricketer whose name has cropped up over the past week is former international stumper Kiran More. The 63-year-old, a former chairman of the selection committee, is from Baroda in Gujarat and pulls enough weight, but the catch is that More’s name did not figure in the initial electoral rolls released last week.

Pranav Amin, son of industrial scion and former IPL chairman Chirayu Amin, has been registered as the representative of Vadodara Cricket Association. The deadline for any revision of the rolls ends this evening and all eyes will be on any possible changes in the names of the state representatives.

There has been some media chatter about Raghuram Bhatt, a former left-arm spinner from Karnataka, who played a handful of Tests. However, informed sources feel the BCCI is unlikely to endorse back-to-back representatives from Karnataka State Cricket Association after Binny, while the state body’s role in the infamous stampede at the celebrations of Royal Challengers Bengaluru's IPL win this year is very much under the scanner. There are a number of other first-class cricketers of repute on the rolls in  Jaydev Shah (Saurashtra) and Mithun Manhas (Jammu & Kashmir).

It’s in this scenario that an ‘informal’ meeting at home minister Amit Shah’s residence in the capital has been convened on Saturday, 20 September with the BCCI top brass to decide on the cricket board’s leadership structure for the next three years. There are no clear favourites at this point, with both Ganguly and More preferring to downplay their chances within their close circles,

The challenge for the decision-makers is that they cannot afford to deviate from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unwritten diktat of having former sportspersons for such top jobs. This is what had paved the way for Ganguly to take over in 2019 though the early advantage rested with Brijesh Patel.

The BCCI president is a position which has attracted huge speculation and eyeballs right after the choice of the Indian captain in recent years. While the election for the top job has seen acrimonious battles between heavyweight politicians or administrators in the past — it’s now a matter of which former cricketer enjoys the confidence of the powers that be.

One has to keep the fingers crossed to find out the chosen one!