N Srinivasan and Niranjan Shah, two members of the old guard who became ineligible to hold office in the BCCI following the board’s constitutional reforms, will continue to have close links to the administration of their home states with their children now assuming top positions in their respective associations.
Rupa Gurunath, Srinivasan’s daughter, and Jaydev Shah, Shah’s son, have been elected president of the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association (TNCA) and the Saurashtra Cricket Association (SCA) respectively.
Gurunath is married to Gurunath Meiyappan, the former Chennai Super Kings official who was banned for life from any involvement in cricket for his role in the IPL betting scandal in 2013 by the Justice RM Lodha Committee.
Apart from deciding the quantum of punishments for those found guilty in the scandal, the Supreme Court had empowered the Lodha Committee to make recommendations for reforms within the BCCI. The court accepted most of the recommendations, which eventually became the basis for the BCCI’s new constitution.
Under the new constitution, Srinivasan and Shah are ineligible to hold office in the BCCI or its member associations for multiple reasons, one of them being that they are both more than 70 years old. There is, however, no clause preventing their relatives from contesting elections or holding positions of power and influence.
Of the two, 36-year-old Jaydev was a first-class cricketer who retired from all forms of cricket last season, after scoring 5354 runs at an average of 29.91 in 120 first-class matches, most of them as Saurashtra’s captain.
More to follow…