BCCI meet to discuss a host of issues

The BCCI will also decide on Sharad Pawar's successor © Getty Images

When the Board of Control for Cricket in India meets in Mumbai on Tuesday, the buzz may be singularly focussed on the Indian Cricket League (ICL) and what to do with players who have left its fold, but the BCCI has several other matters to discuss on its agenda.

But first and foremost, the board will have to decide what action to take with players who have joined the ICL. In a press conference on Monday, the Zee Telefilms group announced that it had already signed up as many as 44 players. This has left several Ranji teams, notably Hyderabad, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Railways and Bengal severely depleted.

It is widely believed that the BCCI will stick to its guns and slap bans on players who have signed up with the ICL. While the BCCI cannot, in any way, stop players from signing up with the ICL, it is certainly within their grasp to exclude these players from deriving any benefit from the BCCI. This means that these players will not be eligible to play in any tournaments conducted by the BCCI or its constituents.

This will in turn mean that these players cannot even take part in league cricket organised by state associations - the Kanga League in Mumbai or the First Division League for the Palayampatti Shield in Chennai, for example. These players are likely to lose their jobs, which they hold solely for the purposes of representing a certain team - corporate or bank or public sector - in cricket tournaments. The players will also be ineligible for the pension that the BCCI currently pays out to former cricketers.

However, one of the pressing matters that the board will be attending to, when it comes to making constitutional amendments, is finding a successor for Sharad Pawar, the BCCI president, in September 2008. Pawar will become vice-president of the International Cricket Council in July 2008, and will then have to relinquish office at his home board. The BCCI is set to appoint an interim president for the three-month period from July till September 2008, when the elections are set to take place.

Once the ICC announced that David Morgan of the ECB, and Pawar from the BCCI, would take up office as ICC president in 2008 and 2010 respectively, the BCCI decided to clear the stage for similar practice at home, wherein the president elect will be chosen a year in advance. This suggestion, sources reveal, came from Inderjit Singh Bindra, former president of the BCCI and current president of the Punjab Cricket Association. It was suggested that such a practice would ensure that the president elect had a good working knowledge of the board, and that elections would proceed in a smooth manner.

As per the procedural changes being suggested, the interim president for that period will be someone from the same zone as the existing president - West Zone - which in this case will be Chirayu Amin. By rotation the next turn, which will be for a full three years, from September 2008 till 2011, goes to Central Zone. The front-runner here is Shashank Manohar, who is the president of the Vidarbha Cricket Association and vice-president of the BCCI, apart from being a close aide of Pawar. What this will mean, in effect, is that there will be no elections for the post of president in 2008 and the current regime will continue, unchallenged, till 2011.

It is understood that Lalit Modi, the man behind many of the financial and business aspects of the board, is to have suggested that a similar procedure be adopted for other office bearers of the board, apart from the president, in order to ensure some sort of continuity. However, it is unclear how other members of the board have taken this suggestion.

The BCCI will also have to make changes to its constitution for the appointment of paid selectors. It is believed that from 2008 onwards - till then the existing system will continue - there will be a pool of five selectors, preferably but not necessarily one from each zone, with a tenure of three years and an option of a one-year extension. Also set to change is the criteria for selectors. All senior selectors will now have to have played at least five Test matches or 50 first-class matches. Currently a selector merely has to have played one first-class match. To be a member of the junior selection committee, the eligibility will be a minimum of 25 first-class matches.