Shashank Manohar has resigned as president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
He addressed his resignation letter to BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur on Tuesday afternoon. In fact, he had told Thakur about his decision three days ago. “I have done what my conscience told me to do,” Manohar told The Hindu from Mahabaleshwar, where he is on vacation.
As an outcome of his resignation, he has also ceased to be the BCCI’s representative in the International Cricket Council (ICC) and thereby its chairman.
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The lawyer-turned-administrator, who was the architect of the Vidarbha Cricket Association’s modern stadium at Jamtha, Nagpur, was elected unopposed as BCCI president for the second time in October 2015 following the demise of Jagmohan Dalmiya. He was the president from 2008 to 2011, succeeding Sharad Pawar.
After taking over the BCCI reins, Manohar went on overdrive, introducing many reforms with the objective of winning back the confidence of fans, who felt there was a rot in the BCCI and IPL.
He also influenced the ICC into passing resolutions to change its governance structure so that the ICC chairman was independent of the member cricket boards.
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He has told the ICC Board that a large chunk of the annual revenue cannot go to the cricket boards of India, England and Australia. Manohar has the majority support of the 13 directors of the ICC. His resignation has cleared the path for him to be nominated by the ICC Board members as the next independent chairman.
Clearly Manohar was at odds with many recommendations of the Supreme Court-appointed committee for ‘Reforms in Cricket’, headed by Justice R.M. Lodha.
He was perhaps not as much against the age limit of 70 recommended by the committee but thought he would be “uncomfortable’’ with the new governance and administrative structure in which the working committee would have given way as a bylaw to an Apex Council with Board members, two player representatives (male and female) and a representative of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) to monitor the financial aspects. He was also against taking away the full membership (and thereby voting rights) of founder-members (Cricket Club of India (Mumbai), National Cricket Club (Kolkata), three government members, Railways, Services and Universities), four members from Maharashtra and Gujarat, and instead granting full membership to several North-Eastern States. He was also against the term-of-office recommendations, the BCCI being asked to fund the players association and also removing office-bearers from the IPL Governing Council and giving two slots to the franchises.
It was at Manohar’s behest that lawyer K.K. Venugopal articulated the BCCI’s views at court hearings.
The next hearing has been posted for June 30. Manohar has resigned with the Supreme Court yet to give an order, but the Chief Justice of India, Tirath Singh Thakur, has on a number of occasions indicated what he was going to say in the order. Not long ago, Manohar had told The Hindu that he had conveyed his decision to many BCCI members two months ago and that he would have been incompetent to head the BCCI with a changed governance and administrative structure in place.