Kolkata, November 29:

Political heavyweight Sharad Pawar wrested control of India’s cricket board on Tuesday, ending Jagmohan Dalmiya’s more than 25-year stranglehold on the country’s richest sporting body. Federal agriculture minister Pawar defeated Dalmiya’s incumbent nominee, Ranbir Singh Mahendra, 20-11 in the election for the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in Kolkata.

The election was conducted by India’s former chief election commissioner, TS Krishnamurthy, on the orders of the Supreme Court after voting was put off in September due to legal wrangles. Pawar, 64, won the election on his second attempt after losing to Mahendra last year. Pawar currently heads the Mumbai Cricket Association.

Dalmiya, 65, a former president of the ICC, is a known master of realpolitik whose financial wizardy is largely credited with turning the gentlemen’s game into a lucrative global sport.

The BCCI has assets worth around $250m and the latest annual report gave its gross earnings for the year 2004-05 as $46m. Dalmiya was credited with bringing the World Cup to the Indian sub-continent which has held the event twice in 1987 and 1996.

Two former BCCI chiefs, Inderjit Bindra and Raj S Dungapur, broke away from the Dalmiya faction and threw their weight behind Pawar. The Pawar faction also swept elections for the office-bearers with Niranjan Shah taking over as secretary from K Nair.

Mohinder Pandove beat Brijesh Patel for the post of joint-secretary while N Srinivasan was made the treasurer in place of Jyoti Bajpai.

Ganguly-backers sacked

KOLKATA: Deposed India captain Sourav Ganguly suffered another blow when three selectors who supported his return were sacked from the five-man panel. Ganguly was included in the 15-man squad for Friday’s first Test against Sri Lanka on a 3-2 verdict by the selectors. His backers, Pranob Roy, Yashpal Sharma and Gopal Sharma were all removed. The trio was replaced by Ranjib Biswal, Sanjay Jagdale and Bhupinder Singh. Kiran More was retained as chief selector and VB Chandrasekhar also held on to his job.