Yesterday, on the eve of the Board of Cricket Control’s annual meeting, Jagmohan Dalmiya was elected BCCI president. Reports have stated that both N Srinivasan and Sharad Pawar agreed to Dalmiya’s candidature, but not without some maneuvering by Pawar. Pawar is said to have wanted Dalmiya as president, since he was not close to former president, Srinivasan. However, in this excerpt from ‘Beyond the Boundary’ by Rahul Bhatia in our August 2014 issue, Bhatia explores Srinivasan’s relationship with Dalmiya, which was definitely antagonistic, but also convenient when necessary.
In 1999, AC Muthiah was named president of the BCCI, thanks to the support of a man who had loomed large over both Indian and international cricket for years—Jagmohan Dalmiya. Dalmiya, a power player from West Bengal, had been named ICC president in 1997. The prime of his administrative career coincided with possibly the biggest development in cricket history—the explosion of the market for cricket broadcasting, particularly in the newly open Indian economy. Dalmiya was instrumental in bringing the World Cup to the Indian subcontinent in 1996, when it was co-hosted by India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. By this time, Dalmiya had attracted the attention of the whole cricket-playing world; in his book Sticky Wicket, the former ICC CEO Malcolm Speed described him as “without doubt one of the most resolute, able, difficult, prickly, and unpredictable men” he had met.
Over the next decade, Srinivasan’s relationships with Muthiah and Dalmiya, antagonistic and convenient by turns, helped him consolidate his power, both at the TNCA and within the BCCI. “Our group brought Dr Muthiah to power” at the BCCI, a former senior official of that organisation from Rajasthan, known for his mining and construction interests, told me. “That’s Dalmiya, Arun Jaitley,”—the senior BJP leader who headed the Delhi District Cricket Association for over a decade—“all of us. We voted for him.” Badri Seshadri, one of the founders of Cricinfo, realised that Dalmiya was the real power behind the throne when he once took a proposal to Muthiah. “You must convince Dalmiya,” Sheshadri recalled being told. “He made it very plain.”
But Muthiah and Dalmiya began to drift apart almost immediately after the former’s election. “Dalmiya probably thought that because Muthiah has been brought into power by him, he would be consulted on all matters,” the senior official said. “Which Muthiah did not do. To that extent, Muthiah was correct. But his knowledge of cricket was very limited, and he, in turn, started taking impulsive decisions.” Like many others, this official did not want to be identified, even though he had stepped away from cricket after being voted out of his post. It seemed an unspoken code among most cricket administrators that the safest place to be, after years of handling large contracts and currying favour, was underground.
In 2000, Muthiah’s opponents on the board grew unhappy with what they saw as his independent streak. With the Indian team going through a funk, Muthiah invited the retired Australian opening batsman Geoff Marsh to become a consultant for the country’s new National Cricket Academy. “That led to a lot of complications,” the official said.
Hoping to undercut Muthiah by strengthening an opponent on his home turf, his BCCI critics turned Chennai-wards, to Srinivasan at the TNCA. Muthiah’s term-limit as TNCA president meant he would have to leave office in 2002, and it was widely known that his succession plans did not include Srinivasan. “We thought, if anyone could beat Muthiah in TNCA, Srinivasan could,” the Rajasthan official remembered. “We started to pep him up in a big way.”
Meanwhile, apparently dissatisfied with Muthiah’s leadership of the BCCI, his former mentor, Dalmiya, also decided to withdraw his support. In the next BCCI elections, held in Chennai in 2001, Dalmiya won the presidency even though he was widely expected to lose to Muthiah. Two former cricket officials—Venkateswaran, and a confidante of Dalmiya’s—told me that Palaniappan Chidambaram, the former Indian finance minister, was in the hotel where the election was held at the time of the vote. The minister’s wife, Nalini, a Supreme Court advocate, was the election observer, but Chidambaram’s presence was perceived as a real show of Dalmiya’s strength. One senior journalist I spoke to, who was present that day, claimed, “It was clear: you don’t vote for me, you get raided by income tax.” When I contacted Nalini Chidambaram, she denied her husband had ever been at the hotel. “No, no, no,” she said. “He has got nothing to do with it.”
Defeated, Muthiah left the BCCI, but he continued to scrabble for purchase within the organisation—something that changed his attitude to Srinivasan. In the 2002 TNCA election, held that June, Muthiah surprised his supporters and rivals by vouching for Srinivasan. The organisation’s club representatives, used to thinking of the two as enemies, were taken aback; rumours about the volte-face still buzz around today, even a dozen years later. As part of the deal, Srinivasan apparently agreed to help one of Muthiah’s men into the position of association secretary.
During this election, Srinivasan displayed an uncanny ability to play difficult situations to his advantage. Ashok Kumbhat, the association secretary who had once expected to succeed Muthiah as president of the TNCA, decided to run independently. According to a person involved with Kumbhat’s campaign, six months before the election, “Srinivasan called us. He said, ‘Please don’t have a contest.’” Kumbhat disregarded the request, and continued his preparations.
However, before the elections could be held as planned, in June 2002, they were stopped for reasons that went beyond cricket. Tamil Nadu was then ruled by the AIADMK under Jayalalithaa, who had already cast aspersions on Srinivasan as a financial conduit for her rivals’ undeclared income. Shortly before the elections, Venkateswaran told me, Jayalalithaa made it known to Muthiah that the elections could not go ahead. He recalled the panic with which Muthiah called him. “‘Madam wants me to stop it. What do I do?’ I advised him to calm down. Let us find a solution.”
Muthiah decided to postpone the election, and left Venkateswaran to tell Srinivasan that the deal was off. He did so the next day, at a gathering of the association’s members, where he pulled Srinivasan aside after a round of drinks. To his surprise, Srinivasan insisted on going ahead with the elections. “He wasn’t upset,” Venkateswaran said. “He just said, ‘We’ll fight it out.’”
At this point Srinivasan had, to all appearances, a reasonable majority over Kumbhat—but not an insurmountable one. Venkateswaran told me that when he heard the election might be delayed, Srinivasan grew restless. In order to calm his mind, Srinivasan resolved to turn Kumbhat’s backers. Practically every night for the next month, he hosted dinners for different groups of club secretaries and owners. The month passed tensely, but elections went ahead as scheduled. In the end, Kumbhat won 61 votes. Srinivasan won over 120.
“In that one month, several of Kumbhat’s supporters became Srinivasan’s supporters,” the Chennai club owner said. “How, we don’t know.”
Within a couple of months of the 2002 TNCA election, Srinivasan announced he wanted to enter the BCCI as one of its vice presidents. According to Venkateswaran, he spoke with representatives from five states, and asked for their support at the board’s yearly general meeting, slated to take place in Kolkata that September. As once before, with his entry into the TNCA, there was no majority waiting to put him in place. Venkateswaran remembered telling Srinivasan, before he left, “It doesn’t matter if you don’t become vice president. The finance committee chairman of the BCCI is leaving to become the secretary of the BCCI. Why don’t you aim for the vacant post?” By the time they spoke again the following night, Srinivasan had done precisely this, and secured the office.
With the TNCA behind him and the BCCI awaiting, Srinivasan’s next major alliance seemed inevitable. The man at the centre of the BCCI was Dalmiya, so Srinivasan turned to developing a friendship with him. “TNCA’s votes, which were in the opposition, began to come to Mr Dalmiya,” the BCCI official from Rajasthan said. “Because he said”—to Srinivasan—“‘I’m going to support you and I’m going to remain loyal.’ He became very loyal, and very close. And the man is—” the official paused. “He’s a diligent man. Otherwise he couldn’t have lasted this long. He has got to have some merit in him. Lot of merit in him.”
An excerpt from ‘Beyond the Boundary,’ published in The Caravan’s August 2014 issue. Read the story in full here.