Anurag Thakur was unanimously elected as the youngest Board of Control
for Cricket in India (BCCI) president post-Independence, while Ajay
Shirke was chosen as Secretary in a smooth change of guard at a time
when the world's richest Board is sailing through choppy waters.
The 41-year-old Anurag Thakur replaced
Shashank Manohar who quit the position to take up the International
Cricket Council (ICC) chairman's job. The Maharashtra Cricket
Association chief and business magnate Shirke expectedly filled in the
Secretary's post which was left vacant by Thakur's resignation on
Saturday.
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 Saturday, paving the
way for his unanimous choice as the 34th President of the world's most
influential cricket body.
In a show of solidarity on Saturday, 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 Bharatiya Janata Party MP 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 LodhaCommittee'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 lay down
office 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.
While Raj had played 86 first-class matches for Rajasthan and the then
Madhya Bharat as a medium pacer and also claimed 206 wickets, Thakur has
represented HP in a lone Ranji Trophy game as a right-hand batsman and
off break bowler in 2000-11 season.
Thakur is also the third person backed by East Zone to be elected to the top post during the 2014-1017 period.
Jagmohan Dalmiya, who was the consensus candidate after Srinivasan's
exit, died in office last year and Manohar took over in October, 2015. Read More
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