Dalmiya shaped Indian cricket into the global powerhouse it is today
Jagmohan Dalmiya
Kolkata: With the demise of Jagmohan Dalmiya on Sunday, Indian cricket lost one of its shrewdest adminstrators. In his chequered administrative career, Dalmiya saw it all: the good, the bad and the proverbial ugly.
It was the astute business man from Kolkata, who understood the potential of India becoming commercially a global powerhouse of cricket. His biggest gift to Indian cricket was to strike a multimillion television deal with World Tel in the early ’90s that went a long way in making BCCI the richest cricketing body in the world.
A shrewd tactician and someone who was at forefront of the BCCI numbers game, Dalmiya was the brains behind India co-hosting the Reliance World Cup in 1987 and then the Wills World Cup in 1996.
In 1997, he was elected unanimously the ICC president. In 2001, he defeated A.C. Muttiah to become the BCCI president in a hotly-contested election. He gradually lost support and was suspended from the BCCI in 2006 and also ousted from his home association.
When the spot-fixing scandal broke, he was the first consensus candidate for interim president’s post and earlier this year, he again emerged as the man who was found acceptable by one and all to take up the mantle of the BCCI president.
( Source : deccan chronicle/agencies )
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