Will Srini be banished to St Helena?

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Sunday might be his last day as elected president of BCCI. Like Napoleon being sent finally to exile in Saint Helena, Srinivasan might be banished and forcefully confined to affairs of the TNCA in his personal island of cricket governance in which he might still command a majority for life because he has done so many favours to that electorate of club and district secretaries.

Amateur psychologists attempting to analyse this cricket admin phenomenon known as ‘Srini’ would note the overwhelming atmosphere of the fawning servility of lesser men that helped him grow so quickly.
In those early days when people like Bharath Reddy introduced him to BCCI politics, Srini began as a most avid learner.
From there to becoming top cat of the jungle was the work of a master manipulator who knew every man has a price and he was at an advantage as he was quite willing to pay it.
The phenomenal ability to hand out strategic favours to the right people in order to further his own agenda of control in BCCI, where he began as treasurer before moving up to secretary and then president, is unmatched in the history of the Board.
His largesse changed the lives of many people, which is one reason why there was such a conspiracy of silence on the issue from admin men as well as players, the latter lot even happier after a whopping Rs 100 crore testimonial from IPL funds in 2012.
Such practised generosity may fly in the face of an image of a man suffering the Napoleon Syndrome — a psychological phenomenon said to exist in men of short stature and characterised by overly aggressive, domineering behaviour thought to compensate for a shortcoming.
It is when he is cornered, like now, that Srini has shown that he may be suffering a touch of the Napoleon complex. The fighter in him draws from the adrenaline rush of battle.
A more academic parallel is owed to a researcher who dug this out of the Animal Farm of George Orwell. Apparently, this phenomenon of Srini and the board is a replica of a bonny creature in that famous book in which the animal kingdom is symbolic of human society at large.
An Orwellian allegory paints this tale of power best — “What motivates Napoleon? As soon as he moves to power, it becomes clear that he has very little interest in Old Major’s prophecy. Napoleon doesn’t care much if all animals are equal or if they control the means of production, so what keeps him ticking? It’s actually not at all hard to pinpoint what motivates Napoleon: a lust for power and a case of good old-fashioned greed.”
In many senses, Srini perfected the art of BCCI management from predecessors like Sharad Pawar and Jagmohan Dalmiya, perhaps more from the latter’s Machiavellian art of total control.
Only, Srini took it further to an extent that opponents were not merely ignored, they were humiliated or forced to toe the line as we saw in the case of the cricket legend Kapil Dev. To use an Orwellian imagery, the menagerie was complete when even Kapil refused to speak out from the UK.
The farm seems to have woken up to the machinations now and there is frenetic activity in which the chief is to be “displaced”, asked to “step aside” or “step down”, depending on the terminology to be used on Sunday.
When The Asian Age was the first newspaper to ask him to step down to uphold norms of propriety after his son-in-law was arrested for IPL betting and other activities, Srini and his team were so hurt as to be blind to the logic that threw light on the right course of action.
Much as Napoleon of Animal Farm got rid of anyone that had the power to contradict him, Srini fought a lonely battle for nine days attempting silence dissent rather than act in the sporting manner that may have left some of his credibility intact. It’s on his home turf that the final showdown will take place, on his farm as it were.