India’s tour to SA could be curtailed

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BCCI interim chief Jagmohan Dalmiya

The all-important annual general meeting of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, which will decide the future of sidelined president N. Srinivasan, will be held in Chennai on September 29.

Among other decisions taken at the working committee meeting in Kolkata on Sunday, the board also approved India’s itinerary in the coming months, the most important being a proposed home series against the West Indies during November that could see Sachin Tendulkar playing his 200th Test at home.
However, this will mean that the tour to South Africa (seven ODIs, two Tests and two T20s) would be curtailed.
According to reports, the Indian board wants to reduce the number of one-dayers to five instead of seven.
As was the case with the working committee meeting in Delhi on August 2, the spotlight was firmly on whether Srinivasan will chair the meeting or not. The Tamil Nadu strongman arrived in the city in the morning and held one-on-one meetings with most of the working committee members in a bid keep his support base intact.
The India Cements owner was advised against chairing the meet by the BCCI legal team as that could have amounted to contempt of court given the Public Interest Litigation by the Cricket Association of Bihar against him has been accepted by the Supreme Court.
The apex court’s decision to defer the hearing on BCCI petition, challenging the Bombay High Court order declaring the probe panel into the spot-fixing row as ‘illegal and unconstitutional’, also worked against him.
Srinivasan, however, was asked by interim chief Jagmohan Dalmiya to attend the meeting on the day and discharge his duties as president of the body till the AGM as per the constitutional and statutory functions of the BCCI even as the latter will continue to look after the day-to-day functions. While Dalmiya chaired the meeting, Srinivasan presided when matters related to accounts were taken up for approval.
The Chennai Super Kings owner has been facing the heat ever since the spot-fixing scandal involving team principal and his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan broke out and had to step aside following intense pressure.
Since getting a clean chit from the board’s two-member probe panel, his attempts to return at the helm has hit rough weather.
“Apart from the home series against Australia in October 2013, the working committee approved a proposed home series against the West Indies in the month of November 2013,” a release by the board said.
Dalmiya’s ‘Operation Clean-Up’, which he proposed in an earlier meeting to curb corruption also got a go ahead by the gathering. The recommendations will be incorporated in the upcoming Champions League T20, scheduled to begin from September 17. It was also decided that the board’s disciplinary committee will meet shortly to consider Anti-Corruption Unit chief Ravi Sawani’s report on the IPL spot-fixing scandal.