Srinivasan on a sticky wicket as BCCI puts off meet

Indian cricket board chief N Srinivasan looks on the verge of being forced to quit in the wake of the Indian Premier League (IPL) spot-fixing scandal with more and more board members coming out openly against him.

The drama was expected to unfold at a meeting of the working committee of the Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI), scheduled for today, but this has been put off till Sunday afternoon amid reports that senior office-bearers may resign en masse if Srinivasan does not resign as president.

Board treasurer Ajay Shirke and secretary Sanjay Jagdale have already resigned in protest against Srinivasan's continuation, and more are expected to follow suit over the next couple of days.

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Arun Jaitly, a vice-president of the BCCI, also broke his silence on Saturday – but only to waffle, without giving any firm commitment.

"Wait for a day and you will hear something significant," said Jaitley when asked if all the five BCCI vice presidents might step down in order to mount pressure on Srinivasan.

Anurag Thakur, joint secretary of the BCCI working committee, said this afternoon that a number of issues would be discussed during the meeting. "I discussed with the president, I have given notice for meeting and it will be held tomorrow in Chennai. We are going to discuss a lot of issues.

''I think it is too early to discuss it in the media (on the presidential issue) but as I said we will discuss number of the issues - to clean the image whatever steps are required will be taken by BCCI. There will be transparency and fair probe. There will be no conflict of interest."

The BCCI has five vice presidents - Arun Jaitley (North), Shivlal Yadav (South), Chitrak Mitra (East), Niranjan Shah (West) and Sudhir Dabir (Central). While Mitra has ruled out his resignation, reports say Dabir may step down.

The issue erupted after Srinivasan's son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan was arrested for alleged involvement in betting.

The anti-Srinivasan camp led by Jaitley, IPL chairman and Congress leader Rajev Shukla and BCCI joint secretary Anurag Thakur, also a BJP leader, are trying their best to get the numbers on their side to oust Srinivasan.

The key players in the drama are Shukla, Jaitley, Nationalist Congress Party chief and union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, former BCCI chief and Cricket Association of Bengal president Jagmohan Dalmiya, former BCCI chief Shashank Manohar and Srinivasan himself.

Pawar, also a former BCCI president, has got key associations like Mumbai, Punjab and Maharashtra to hit out at Srinivasan, while Dalmiya has two votes of West Bengal and National Cricket Club.

According to latest computations, in case of a vote, 18 members will want Srinivasan to resign, while eight are in favour of Srinivasan and the others are still sitting on the fence. At least 24 votes out of 30 are needed to impeach Srinivasan.