Even as one door closed on him, another appeared to open for T.C. Mathew.
Mathew, the Kerala Cricket Association president, resigned from the post along with association secretary T.N. Ananthanarayanan here on Monday following the Supreme Court’s order based on the Justice Lodha Committee’s recommendations.
Now, Mathew appears to be the frontrunner for the national body BCCI’s interim president’s post till the Supreme Court appoints its committee to run the day-to-day affairs of the board.
While passing its order, which fully supported the Lodha Committee’s recommendations to reform the BCCI, the Supreme Court had said that the senior-most vice-president of the board should take over as its president.
“Three of the (five) BCCI vice-presidents are above 70 (which means that they are ineligible as per the Lodha Committee’s recommendations), one is 69 so…,” Mathew left the sentence floating, while speaking to The Hindu on Monday evening, when asked about his prospects of being the BCCI’s interim president.
Youngest VP
“I don’t know what they are going to decide, nobody has contacted me. Age-wise, I’m the youngest,” said Mathew who was elected the BCCI vice-president for the first time early last year and who will continue to hold that post despite his exit from the KCA.
The 52-year-old Mathew, an advocate by profession who said that he was doing his PhD in sports management, made it clear that he need not have resigned as the KCA president.
“Its implementation is at the BCCI-level, not at the State-level. And at the State-level, I need not resign but I thought it is proper for me to take a break. And that’s why I resigned.
“It is applicable for those who have cumulatively completed nine years in the BCCI, that’s what the verdict says. So, based on that, I could have continued in the KCA.”
Things will be clearer on this issue in a day or two.
Mathew, who had been in his 20th year as a KCA office-bearer, first as a treasurer and later as secretary before being elected the president, said that he needed a break.
“I had decided to express my desire to resign to my friends yesterday. For the last one week, I was discussing whether I should resign but they all said ‘no’.
“It has been so hectic, I thought I needed a break. My house construction is also going on, I can focus on that. It has been dragging for the last two-and-a-half years.”
