Jagmohan Dalmiya – The Man Who Fated Indian Cricket

BCCI president Jagmohan Dalmiya, who passed away late on Sunday night (i.e. 20th September, 2015), Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Pranab Mukherjee condoled the death of the cricket administrator. The condolences paid by cricket fraternity from Sourav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar, Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan to VVS Laxman, everyone mourned the death of the veteran cricket administrator. On tragic demise of Mr.Dalmiya, even the cricket world pay their tributes to the one of the greatest administrator of cricket through Twitter, terming it a huge loss for the game of cricket.

Jagmohan Dalmiya was an Indian cricket administrator and businessman from the city of Kolkata. He headed the ICC between 1997 and 2000, and was the President of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB). He played a pivotal role in recognising and unlocking cricket’s commercial potential in India and around the world during his 36 years career. He was often considered the “man who made cricket a global sport“.

Dalmiya’s Masterstroke and TV Rebellion in India

• Mr. Dalmiya’s biggest gift to Indian cricket was to strike a multi-million television deal with World Tel in the early 90’s that went a long way in making BCCI the richest cricketing body in the world.
• Dalmiya was the brain behind India co-hosting the Reliance World Cup in 1987 and then the Wills World Cup in 1996.
• He along with friend turned foe, Inderjit Singh Bindra also defeated the England and Australian block to win the bid for co-hosting 1996 edition in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Since then, there was no stopping the man from Kolkata’s New Alipore. He was virtually a ‘One Man Show‘ for the next 15 years in the cricket board.

Key Highlights of Jagmohan Dalmiya 

• Jagmohan Dalmiya was elected as the President of the ICC in 1997 and held office for three years.
• Mr. Dalmiya was also elected as the President of the BCCI in 2001.
• Was involved in a major row with the ICC, after its referee Mike Denness found Sachin Tendulkar guilty of technical breach of rules and fined him after the Port Elizabeth Test against South Africa in 2001.
• Virendra Sehwag too got a one-Test ban for excessive appealing. Dalmiya forced the South Africa Board to prevent Denness from officiating the last Test.
• Dalmiya’s casting vote helped Ranbir Singh Mahendra win as BCCI president in 2004.
• In 2006, Mr. Dalmiya was expelled from the board for alleged misappropriation of funds and for refusing to provide certain documents.
• In May 2007, Dalmiya challenged the decision in the Bombay High Court and then in the Supreme Court. He was exonerated after the BCCI couldn’t prove their charges.
• The Calcutta High Court too suspended his expulsion, allowing Dalmiya to contest the 2008 CAB (Cricket Association of Bengal ) elections, which he won. The BCCI revoked Dalmiya’s expulsion in 2010 after he withdrew a civil suit against the board.
• In June 2013, he was appointed BCCI interim president after N Srinivasan stepped aside till the probe into IPL spot-fixing case involving his son-in-law was complete.
• On 2nd March, 2015 Dalmiya returned as BCCI president after a 10-year gap replacing N Srinivasan.

Mr. Dalmiya’s contribution towards World Cricket cannot be quantified. Jagmohan Dalmiya, was the “man who made India the epicentre of world cricket“.

India’s Icarus

Today I came across an interesting article posted on India Legal Online by Shantanu Guha Ray, where he has detailed “The systemic targeting of FTIL, leading to its downfall.”

Excerpts:

Jignesh Shah blazed like a meteor and burnt out like one. This entrepreneur, who could have been a sterling exponent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Make in India” program, aimed to take commodities trading online and took on institutional forces such as the National Stock Exchange (NSE). However, in a surprising twist of fate, he was done in by challengers and arrested on May 7, 2014.

It all started in 1988 when Shah started Financial Technologies India Limited (FTIL) and two commodity exchanges — MCX (Asia’s second largest) and National Spot Exchange Limited (NSEL), which was India’s first electronic spot exchange. He began trading in 2008 and did so well that he set up exchanges in Singapore, Bahrain, Dubai, Mauritius and Botswana.

Problems started when MCX decided to take on the NSE-promoted commodity exchange — NCDEX, a competitor — thereby challenging the primacy of NSE. A bureaucrat even expressed concerns at the declining market share of NCDEX in comparison to MCX, suggesting that this raised suspicions that NSE and its subsidiaries were under government protection and patronage.

Meanwhile, NSEL too did very well. But irregularities were found in it and in 2013, a payment crisis hit it, leading to the eventual loss of 5,689.95 crore for investors and Shah’s arrest. However, on August 22, 2014, Shah got bail from the Bombay High Court after three months in custody. There is now a move to merge NSEL with FTIL so that the resources of FTIL can be used for settling the liability. So how did the entrepreneur, who was once in charge of BSE’s online trading, get embroiled in this mess? Has the Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of Mumbai Police been able to find any money trail against FTIL or Shah?

To read the complete article, check the following link.