Shashank Manohar has >resigned as the president of the BCCI . He handed over his resignation letter to BCCI's Hon. Secretary, Anurag Thakur, on Tuesday afternoon. In fact, he had revealed his decision to Thakur three days ago.
"I have done what my conscience told me to do.’’ Manohar told Sportstar from a hill resort in Mahabaleshwar, where he is on an annual vacation with his family.
As an outcome of his resignation from the BCCI, Manohar has also ceased to be the Board's representative in the ICC and the international committee's chairman .
The lawyer-turned cricket administrator, who has been the architect of the Vidarbha Cricket Association’s modern stadium at Jamtha, Nagpur, was elected unopposed as the BCCI president for the second time on October 4, 2015, following the demise of Jagmohan Dalmiya. His second term lasted a little over seven months. Earlier to that, he was the BCCI president from 2008 to 2011, when he succeeded Sharad Pawar.
After taking over at the BCCI, Manohar went on an overdrive and introduced many reforms with the objective of winning back the confidence of the cricket fans — who had felt that a rot had set in, in the BCCI and the IPL — and also influenced the ICC to pass resolutions to change its governance structure, whereby the chairman of the ICC had to be independent of the member cricket boards.
He also told the ICC that the distribution pattern of the annual revenue had to be revised and that a big chunk could not go to the cricket boards of India, England and Australia. Manohar had the majority support of 13 directors in the ICC.
His resignation now has cleared the path for him to be nominated by ICC's Board members as the next independent chairman .
Manohar was at odds with many recommendations of the Supreme Court-appointed committee for 'Reforms in cricket’, headed by Justice R.M. Lodha.
He was perhaps not as much against the age limit of 70 recommended by the Lodha Committee, but he thought he would be "uncomfortable" in the new governance and administrative structure, whereby the Working Committee would have given way as a bylaw to an Apex Council with Board members, two player representatives (male and female) and a representative of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) to monitor the financial aspects.
He was also against the full membership (thereby voting rights) being taken away from the founder members (Cricket Club of India, Mumbai, National Cricket Club, Kolkata, three government members, Railways, Services and Universities), four members from Maharashtra and Gujarat and instead full membership being given to several North-Eastern states. He was also against the term of office recommendations, the BCCI being asked to fund the players' association and also remove the office-bearers from the IPL Governing Council and giving two slots for the franchises.
It was at Manohar’s behest that eminent lawyer K. K. Venugopal articulated the BCCI's views at court hearings. The next hearing has been posted for June 29. Manohar has resigned with the Supreme Court yet to give an order, but the Chief Justice of India, Tirath Singh Thakur, has on a number of occasions indicated what he was going to say in the order.
Not long ago Manohar had told Sportstar that he had conveyed his decision two months ago to many BCCI members and that he would have been incompetent to head the BCCI with a changed governance and administrative structure in place.
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