Elections will take place on Sunday to determine new body
Hyderabad Cricket Association
Hyderabad: It’s judgment day at the Hyderabad Cricket Association, the cricket edifice of Telangana state that has been mired in controversies of late. With the game’s stock booming the stakes for a chair at the HCA offices have only soared. The top 22 who will occupy the HCA hot seats from a field of 25 will be known on Sunday. It’s a variant of the Catch-22 situation for the 217 clubs that will vote to pick the body for a two-year term.
As much as they preach playing straight on the field, it’s the cross batted shots that fetch the most at HCA elections. Members are bound to permute panels in different boxes on the ballot while casting their votes to come up with different combinations. That should mean it will be a mixed bag at the end of the day, but one big newly-stitched cricket family as they will proclaim.
Coming to the ballot, the ones running for president have served in the post earlier and are now leading rival groups. Former Test cricketer Arshad Ayub is pitted against the incumbent G. Vinod. The magic figure at this election is 109 votes in a one-to-one contest.
It’s a Marredpally battle for the secretary’s chair. John Manoj, who as chief coach of St John’s Sports Coaching foundation has churned out state cricketers in different age groups, is up against acting secretary S. Venkateshwaran, who has remained non-controversial amidst the recent mess in the Association.The race for the two joint secretaries seems interesting with Purushottham Agarwal, Basavaraju, R. Vijayanand and Gerrard Carr in fray.
Among the current candidates, R. Devraj had polled the highest number of votes, 131, in the previous polls as an EC member. This time around, he is up against Naresh Sharma, a 120-88 winner in 2012 for the post of treasurer.
The five-cornered vice-presidential battle involves heavyweights. E. Venkatram Reddy and P. Yadagiri are only two sitting members while Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) cricket operations manager M. V. Sridhar, G. Vivekanand, M. Narender Goud, Syed Moizuddin, Surender Agarwal, Prakash Chand Jain, T. Sheshnarayan and D. Kishan Rao are the others in the fidgety field.
Both groups have been talking about allround development of the game in the city and districts if voted to power but the irony is that clubs owned/ represented by quite a few of the contestants are languishing at the bases of lower division leagues. It’s time the members introspected.
( Source : dc correspondent )
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