Jagmohan Dalmiya retired hurt, but is far from out
If Indian cricket is awash with money, few will disagree that one man stands taller than others in turning the gentleman’s game into the most lucrative sport in the subcontinent.
There is no denying the fact that Jagmohan Dalmiya has been at the locus of the commercialising of cricket in the country, despite beginning at a time when the economic liberalisation of India was yet to unleash the vast domestic market that the sport feeds off now.
But everything about Dalmiya’s long innings at the helm of the game in India — having entered the Board of Control for Cricket in India within five years of Sachin Tendulkar’s first birthday — isn’t easily divisible into black and white.
And Dalmiya’s recent return into domestic cricket’s apex body is a case in point, especially considering the inglorious exit that he had been through back in December 2006. That fall from grace and abolition of powers, enjoyed by him in various capacities within the BCCI for over two decades, could have marked his end as a power player in national-level administration.
Yet, the Kolkata-born Marwari has plotted and executed a fickle comeback; one which his clique insist was but expected. “He was destined to come back. All the charges against him are bogus. He is a 100 per cent clean person. I had no doubts about it,” claimed former BCCI secretary JY Lele.
Nonetheless, it was doubts over financial irregularities in PILCOM — the Pakistan-India-Sri Lanka committee set up to execute the 1996 World Cup — that had led the BCCI to file a FIR against Dalmiya in March 2006. A month later, he was suspended from the board on charges of misappropriation.
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The BCCI, late last month, withdrew its law suit against Dalmiya, signalling his return to a sporting body he almost completely transformed. Indeed, his legacy within the BCCI is illustrious, not just in terms of his personal accomplishments but also for the monetary revolution he orchestrated.
Having joined the board in 1979, subsequent to earning his wings at the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB), Dalmiya drew a mercurial trajectory in cricket administration that, at one point, pushed him into the top tier of global sports executives.
By 1983, the graduate of Kolkata’s Scottish Church College had secured the treasurer’s post at the BCCI. It gave him the platform to launch an ambitious bid to draw cricket’s biggest event to India. Eventually, the cricket World Cup came to the subcontinent in 1987, for the first time out of England, and again in 1996. ‘Jaggu’, as he’s known to some, had made it to the big league.
On the way, he turned the BCCI into the richest cricket board in the world: in 1992, the body’s balance-sheet showed a deficit of $150,000 but by 2006, the BCCI was worth some $1.5 billion.
With success came status, and Dalmiya saw himself being selected president of the ICC in 1997 — the first Indian to hold the post. The ‘marketing genius’, as some call him, raked in the money here, too.
But his individualistic style and a TV-right controversy didn’t go down well with his international peers. After three years at the very top of the sport, Dalmiya exited the ICC in 2000. Thereon, began the slide, albeit after a hiatus.
Back in the domestic game, Dalmiya found his way into the BCCI presidency in 2001, with a little help from his friends. The power equation, though, was changing as Sharad Pawar entered the fray.
“The ICC post rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Although he was making a lot of money for the game, cricket-wise he wasn’t helping. The sport was suffering. Match-fixing appeared around this time,” a BCCI match referee said, on the condition of anonymity.
Old friends of Dalmiya worked with new allegiances. And with an opposition said to consist of Pawar, incumbent BCCI secretary N Srinivasan, the Indian Premier League’s now defamed former commissioner Lalit Modi, the Bengal man had the odds stacked against him.
“Dalmiya gets along very well with powerful people, and he has always stayed on the right side of power. But he couldn’t deal with Pawar. The man who stopped the two getting close was (Lalit) Modi,” the referee added. Pawar, president of the Nationalist Congress Party and Union minister of agriculture, is currently president of the ICC.
In any case, Dalmiya’s ploys within the BCCI were stalled, leading to his suspension in 2006. Subsequently began two years of wilderness for the former ICC chief, before he clawed his way back as president of the CAB, his first fiefdom.
But how the latest return to the BCCI was facilitated, and to what end, remains a matter of conjecture, especially since Dalmiya refuses to talk about it. “Different stories are coming out. I am not discussing this matter any more. I don’t want to create misunderstandings,” he said when contacted.
Cricket historian Boria Majumdar, however, points out the implications of the wily administrator’s return in clear terms. “It is very significant because it shows the realignment of the power structure within the BCCI. It is a move that has been brokered by Arun Jaitley, and shows that Pawar has been marginalised,” said Majumdar.
What Dalmiya will make of this homecoming, though, will depend on how much space he can carve out within the stranglehold of BCCI’s incumbent president Shashank Manohar and president-elect N Srinivasan. Indian cricket’s original marketing wizard has already lost out on three seasons of the Indian Premier League. But will he be given a chance to parent the BCCI's new cash cow, now that its founding father and commissioner has been ejected?
Dalmiya, clearly, was retired hurt. But not out.
