Vengsarkar to meet Pawar next week

MUMBAI: Chief selector Dilip Vengsarkar would be able to watch the third and deciding Test match between India and Pakistan at Bangalore on all five days following the rescheduling of his meeting with Cricket Board chief Sharad Pawar to next week.
    
"Vengsarkar is expected to meet Pawar next week, and it's likely to be on the 14th (December)," sources close to Vengsarkar said on Friday, a development which has paved the way for the former India skipper to watch the entire proceedings of the Test at Bangalore starting tomorrow.
    
Vengsarkar attended the last selection committee meeting on Wednesday in Bangalore which picked the team for the final Test and the 24 probables for the tour of Australia after making up his mind to do so very late on the eve of the sitting.
    
He had come back from Kolkata in the middle of the second Test after his demands for the scrapping of the seven-point guidelines issued to the selectors that included a ban on them from writing columns and talking to the media, were not accepted by the Board.
    
Vengsarkar, who had to stop his regular newspaper columns following the Board's diktat, also dashed off a letter to the BCCI stating his position not to attend the meeting unless his demands were met, but the Board did not budge from its stand.
    
Hectic parleys over phone with Pawar on the eve of the selection meeting, after the board chief's softening of the stand on the issue, enabled Vengsarkar to make up his mind to proceed to Bangalore and chair the meeting.
    
"I have decided to attend the meeting in the interest of Indian cricket and following the softening of its stand by the Board," Vengsarkar, who had demanded compensation from the BCCI for stopping his columns, had said.
    
The indications of a breakthrough in the standoff between Vengsarkar and the Board came earlier on that day when the Board, in a dramatic turnaround, said it would examine his "legitimate" demands for compensation for not writing columns.
    
In an apparent bid to work out a truce, Pawar said he wanted Vengsarkar to continue in the post.
    
In an unscheduled press conference, Pawar had announced a meeting of the BCCI's Working Committee has been convened on December 16 in Mumbai to look into the chief selector's 'legitimate' demands for compensation.
    
"We don't have paid selectors, like some other countries have. But selectors need to travel a lot and watch number of matches. And Vengsarkar said he would incur a loss of Rs 40 lakh, which is not a small amount. So we have to decide how to compensate the loss," Pawar had said.
    
Next week's meeting between the former cricketer and the Union Minister, originally scheduled for this weekend, is to take place before the BCCI's Finance Committee meeting on December 14, and Special General Meeting and Working Committee meeting, both on the 16th, as per current indications.
    
The Vengsarkar issue is expected to dominate the discussions at these meetings of the country's apex cricket body.