On Tuesday, the BCCI’s new office holders took charge. Former India captain Saurav Ganguly was elected president, but don’t be fooled by his presence on the board. The new BCCI secretary is Jay Amit Shah, son of India’s powerful home minister Amit Shah, and the treasurer, Arun Dhumal, brother of another Central minister, Anurag Thakur, who is himself a former head of the BCCI.
Ganguly’s election was not a foregone conclusion. The decision was clinched only after Thakur, who was backing Ganguly, spoke to “an influential Union cabinet minister” on the telephone and “then took Srinivasan aside for a dialogue”. The influential minister evidently had some lollipop to offer Srinivasan, following which that powerful broker agreed to come on board – a sorry end for the process of reform which the Supreme Court had entrusted to Vinod Rai and his Committee of Administrators in 2016.
