Dalmiya resigns, but with a masterstroke |
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Thursday December 28, 03:41 AM
"Mere pass Eden hai," Jagmohan Dalmiya had told a television channel moments after he was dealt the knockout punch by Sharad Pawar & Co at last November's BCCI elections.
Hounded by the media over the Pilcom controversy, pounded by the BCCI time and again, and deserted by his closest allies in his own backyard, Dalmiya today finally resigned as the president of the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) - once the nerve-centre of world cricket and his last bastion of cricket administration.
After the BCCI expelled him on December 16 (at the Board's Special General Meeting at Jaipur), the beleaguered administrator stepped down from the CAB top job amidst growing pressure from outside and within.
But not without a masterstroke though, as Dalmiya ensured a remarkable moral victory over his fast-growing detractors.
Even as the CAB's emergent Working Committee met this evening, discussing Dalmiya's resignation letter and its acceptance by the members, the 66-year-old businessman propped up Maidan kingmaker and former BCCI president Biswanath Dutt as his successor at the helm of the CAB.
Dutt, a long-time father-figure for Dalmiya and one of the most revered Maidan heavyweights, is learnt to have been persuaded by Dalmiya into taking up the CAB top job. Highly-placed sources in the CAB told The Indian Express that Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee too played a role in coaxing 78-year-old Dutt to succeed Dalmiya till July-end next year.
("The Lok Sabha Speaker requested me to make myself available for the CAB president's post. I haven't told him no," Dutt told PTI.)
Dalmiya, whose last-minute masterstroke to bring his predecessor Dutt into the fray has suddenly turned the tables on the anti-Dalmiya camp, had taken over the CAB president in 1992-93. He entered cricket administration way back in 1977 as the CAB treasurer and quickly rose through the ranks to become the president of the International Cricket Council (ICC).
The anti-Dalmiya camp, led by Kolkata Police Commissioner Prasun Mukherjee - a strong contender to take the CAB post till late last evening - were dealt a crushing blow with the intervention of Somnath Chatterjee. Even as Dalmiya's detractors, including the newly-spawned third front comprising former BCCI joint-secretary Gautam Das Gupta, insist that they will contest against Dutt in the president's race, elections appear unlikely.
It was learnt through reliable sources that the ball is in the court of the Left Front top-brass in West Bengal to talk the Kolkata supercop out of contesting against Dutt.
The CAB's Working Committee will meet again on January 5 to decide on the next course of action. The BCCI's rulebook spells out that the CAB has to pick a new president within 60 days of vacating office. The countdown began today. It was learnt that the special meeting of the CAB's general body will be convened in 21 days' time (from January 5) to select/elect Dalmiya's replacement.
Dalmiya, meanwhile, made himself briefly available for comments and vowed to carry on his own battle against the BCCI over the Pilcom issue. "I will fight till the end, till I clear my name. It will take time, I know. Justice can be delayed, but it can't be denied," a visibly-tormented Dalmiya fumed before mediapersons hours before sending across the resignation letter to the CAB's Working Committee.
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