Sharad Pawar elected MCA president
Faisal Shariff in Bombay
Nationalist Congress Party chief and former Maharashtra chief minister Sharad Pawar was elected president of the Mumbai Cricket Association in Bombay on Friday. In a straight fight, he beat former India captain and coach Ajit Wadekar by 185 votes to 125.
Pravin Barve (153 votes) and Ravi Sawant (135) were elected vice-presidents while Professor Ratnakar Shetty (200) and Mayank Khandwalla (135) were elected joint secretaries. Ramesh Kosambia, who got 222 votes, will be the treasurer.
Of the 12 former cricketers who contested the election, which included names like Test players Raju Kulkarni, Karsan Ghavri, K Jayantilal, Wadekar and Sudhir Nair, and first-class players Milind Rege, Deepak Jadhav, Nitin Shirodkar, Ahmu Dalvi and Sanjay Jaywant, only Lalchand Rajput and Chandrakant Pandit emerged triumphant. The duo were among the 11 committee members elected to the 323-club body which went through a secret ballot on Friday afternoon.
The other committee members are: Sameer Bandekar (141 votes), Sripad Halbe (159), Dr P V Shetty (235), Dr Arun Shamsi (118), Nadeem Memon (122), Hemant Waingankar (174), Pravin Gogri (159), Shrikant Tigdi (130) and Avi Sule (126).
There was a tie between Dr Shamsi and Laxman Chavan, who both got 118 votes. But Shamsi got the president's vote.
Later, Chavan stormed into the meeting, demanding a recount. He has been given 48 hours to appeal.
A beaming Pawar said: "I am grateful to the members for their belief in me. It will be my responsibility to make the MCA work as a team.
"We fought the election in groups; now there is only one group, which is the MCA."
The former Union defence minister pledged to make Bombay the cricketing power it once was. He said more attention would be given to school and college cricket.
"I also like to assure all that Mumbai, which had a galaxy of Test players, will regain its glory," he declared.
He said he would like to take into confidence former Test cricketers and use "their expertise". In this connection he said: "I would also like to invite Wadekar to be part of this team."
Asked what improvements he would be able to bring about in view of the fact that he himself has never played first-class cricket, Pawar retorted, "Ask me this two years later", and walked out.
A dejected Wadekar, who was forced to announce the election results as outgoing vice-president in the absence of outgoing president Manohar Joshi, who had to rush off on some urgent work, congratulated Pawar, saying: "The better man won!"
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