Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan is set to be the latest political entrant into cricket administration. Though it is not clear whether Mr Chavan will contest the election of Mumbai Cricket Association, he will be representing Mazgaon Cricket Club (MCC) in the MCA.
The Mazgaon Club sent a letter to the MCA on Monday notifying it that the Congressman would represent it at all MCA meetings from the date of letter’s submission till further information.
Following the development, speculation was rife that Mr Chavan is likely to contest for the presidency post of MCA against former BCCI president and NCP chief Sharad Pawar.
MCA’s biennial elections for office-bearers and managing committee elections are slated for October 18.
The MCC was previously represented by late Vilasrao Deshmukh in the MCA. “We requested the MCA to change the name of our representative in their records,” confirmed MCC secretary Shah Alam.
Mr Shah, however, was non-committal on whether Mr Chavan would contest in the elections. “We made him our representative and now it is up to him to decide whether he wants to contest the elections or not,” he said.
Interestingly, the same club had written a letter to MCA last month to postpone the biennial elections by a week. According to so-urces, this could be its strategy to buy more time for Mr Chavan.
“We had requested for a week’s postponement citing Id-ul-Adha, which is on October 16, but unfortunately they didn’t agree. The elections had been delayed by months, they could have delayed it for one more week,” Mr Alam said.