BCCI hopes Srinivasan acts in 'appropriate' way

Hours after the Bombay high court verdict termed the BCCI’s internal probe panel as illegal and unconstitutional, the board’s senior functionaries were treading cautiously on the matter of N Srinivasan reclaiming his post. They are now tight-lipped on whether Srinivasan would return to the BCCI fold after the working committee meeting on August 2.

The court heard a PIL filed by Cricket Association of Bihar, questioning the constitution of the BCCI’s two-member probe panel comprising retired judges T Jayaram Chouta and R Balasubramanian. The panel was asked to investigate the role of Srinivasan’s son-in-law, Gurunath Meiyappan, in the recent spot-fixing scam.

The PIL requested the court to direct the BCCI to recall its order constituting the probe panel and form a new panel to hold an inquiry against Meiyappan, India Cements Ltd and Jaipur IPL Cricket Pvt Ltd. Counsels Virendra Tulzapurkar, Birendra Saraf and Ameet Naik represented the petitioner whereas Rafiq Dada and R Subramaniam appeared for the BCCI.

According to the HC judgment on Tuesday, there was disparity in the evidence collected by the probe panel.

 “What else do you expect from us?” a senior BCCI official asked. “Let us go through the complete judgment in a day or so and then we will decide the next course of action.”

 Not too long ago, Srinivasan had accused the BCCI’s North Zone lobby of conspiring against him. However, with less than two months to go for the next board elections, the BCCI officials fear the worst. The sports ministry has insisted that the BCCI must come under the RTI Act, failing which it will not be permitted to call the national team ‘India’.

An anti-Srinivasan wave has gripped the country. His return to the helm is thus fraught with risk, for it could only draw the ire of the sports ministry and speed up the process of bringing the BCCI under the RTI Act.

And it’s a situation that the Indian cricket board dreads. The official dna spoke with admitted that these “are exceptional circumstances after the HC verdict”.

“We leave it to Mr Srinivasan to take a call whether he wants to chair the meeting on August 2 or not. I hope he will take an appropriate decision,” he said. “What the board has done till now is fix any problem if at all it exists in cricket, especially in the IPL. We are doing everything to clean up the game in every possible manner,” he added.

N Srinivasan was however quoted as saying, “Yes, I will be attending the BCCI working Committee meeting in New Delhi on August 2.” Asked in which capacity he will be attending the meeting, Srinivasan said curtly, “Come there and see for yourself as to what capacity I will be attending the meeting!”