BCCI boss denies seeking ICC intervention

MUMBAI: Indian cricket board (BCCI) president Anurag Thakur has denied that he sought a letter from the ICC stating that adoption of the Lodha Committee’s recommendations was “tantamount” to government interference in the working of the board.

While passing an interim order on October 7, the Supreme Court had asked Thakur to file a “personal affidavit” to clarify whether he had asked for ICC’s interventions, as revealed by ICC chief executive David Richardson to an Indian news channel.

“At the outset it is denied that any such request was put forth by me to the CEO of the ICC,” Thakur said in the affidavit, submitted to the Supreme Court on Monday by BCCI’s legal counsel Kapil Sibal. Incidentally, Richardson had never said Thakur had asked him for the letter. Thakur, Richardson had said, had “verbally” asked for a letter and ICC chairman Shashank Manohar turned down the request saying the BCCI needed to put it down in writing first.

Thakur pointed out in his affidavit that during an ICC governance review committee meeting, called on August 6 and 7 in Dubai, he had checked with Manohar whether he had objected to the appointment of a nominee of the Comptroller and Auditor General’s office, a government organisation, on the proposed Apex Council. The Apex Council and a seat for the CAG official were both part of the Lodha Committee’s recommendations, which were approved by the court in its July 18 order.

Thakur asked Manohar, who was the BCCI president between October 2015 and May 2016, if he had suspected the said recommendations could “invoke suspension” from the ICC. “During the meeting with regard to the review of the constitutional provisions of ICC, I pointed out to the Chairman of the ICC, Mr Shashank Manohar that when he was President of BCCI, he had taken a view that the recommendations of the Justice Lodha committee appointing the nominee of the CAG on the Apex Council would amount to governmental interference and might invoke an action of suspension from ICC.

“I therefor requested him that he being the ICC Chairman can a letter be issued clarifying the position which he had taken as BCCI President,” Thakur said in his affidavit.