He may have ensured re-election by a unanimous vote and strengthened his position by placing his men in key posts, but Indian cricket board chief Narayanswami Srinivasan is unable to wish away the spectre of conflict of interest over ownership of the Indian Premier League team, Chennai Super Kings, that lies at his door and could still have a say in his fate.
Just one day ago Australian batsman Michael Hussey, a key member of the IPL franchise owned by Srinivasan-controlled India Cements, made public the cricketing world’s worst-kept secret. In his forthcoming memoir, Hussey said Gurunath Meiyappan, Mr Srinivasan’s son-in-law, was handed the reins of the team by the latter till his alleged involvement in betting on IPL matches emerged.
Mr Srinivasan, who is yet to take charge of the BCCI again after his re-election following a Supreme Court directive on a petition filed by the unrecognised Cricket Association of Bihar, has long maintained that he has no say in the running of the Super Kings, that is owned not by him directly, but by India Cements.
This may be so literally,but it is equally clear that India Cements — which he has run since 1989 — is essentially a corporate entity in which Mr Srinivasan has a controlling and decisive say. The Chennai-based firm has a widely-distributed shareholding pattern with the biggest block (a little over 28 per cent through a set of privately-held investment companies) owned by Mr Srinivasan and his immediate family.
Given the dispersal and pattern of share distribution — between banks, FIIs and other financial institutions and the public — it gives Mr Srinivasan a dominant say in the affairs of India Cements, which is in turn the sole owner of Chennai Super Kings.
An introductory note in India Cements’ website has this to say about its management: “India Cements Ltd is a professionally managed company headed by Mr. N. Srinivasan, vice-chairman and managing director. The day-to-day affairs of the company are managed by him assisted by key personnel in each functional area. The board of directors are ultimately responsible for the management of affairs of the company.”
It is thus clear that regardless of what his stand on the issue is, Mr Srinivasan was and continues to be the final word on matters that count in India Cements, and by extension Chennai Super Kings, particularly now that Mr Meiyappan, who was “team principal” only due to his relationship with the BCCI chief, has summarily been shown the door once it became clear he was entangled in betting and sharing of insider information.
It may also be recalled that Mr Srinivasan had a relevant section of the BCCI’s constitution amended to allow him to own an IPL team. Until September 2008, a BCCI regulation, Clause 6.2.4, held that “no administrator can, directly or indirectly, (have) any commercial interest in the matches or events conducted by the board”.
Mr Srinivasan, then treasurer and vice-chairman of the BCCI, had this clause amended to “no administrator shall have, directly or indirectly, any commercial interest in any of the events of the BCCI, excluding IPL, Champions League and Twenty20” almost as soon as he was elected board secretary.
Since then, he has faced almost as many charges of conflict of interest — over player auctions in particular to suit CSK — as the man he banned for life recently, Lalit Modi. The latter in fact made specific mention over the 2009 auction of retired England all-rounder Andrew Flintoff, alleging there was “arm-twisting” involved in the sale of the player.
“I shouldn’t have let that happen,” he had told a television channel last year.