Former domestic player and administrator Mithun Manhas was unanimously elected on Sunday as president of India\u2019s cricket board, the sport\u2019s most powerful national body.<\/p>\n
Manhas was the only nominee to be chief of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and was appointed after the board\u2019s annual general meeting in Mumbai.<\/p>\n
Rajeev Shukla was elected as vice-president, while Devajit Saikia will stay on as secretary, the BCCI said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Manhas, 45, never played for India but turned to the game\u2019s administration after his first-class playing career ended.<\/p>\n
He replaces India\u2019s former World Cup-winner Roger Binny, who quit in August after reaching the mandatory retirement age of 70.<\/p>\n
Cricket\u2019s massive popularity in India has helped the BCCI become by far the wealthiest of all of the sport\u2019s boards, netting massive money from sponsorship and TV deals.<\/p>\n
Manhas\u2019 rise has apparently been backed by India\u2019s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).<\/p>\n
He was chosen at a key meeting in New Delhi last week that was also attended by senior BJP members, the Indian media reported.<\/p>\n
The meeting was held at the residence of India\u2019s Home Minister Amit Shah, who is the father of International Cricket Council chief Jay Shah.<\/p>\n
Manhas most recently worked as director of the cricket association in Indian-occupied Kashmir.<\/p>\n
A middle-order batsman who scored 9,714 runs at an average of 45.82 in 157 domestic matches, Manhas remained on the fringes of national selection.<\/p>\n
Cricket pundits have said he was unlucky to play in the same era as Indian greats Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, and VVS Laxman.<\/p>\n
He was also overshadowed by the presence of Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir in his Delhi team, but led the side with those two star players often on national duty.<\/p>\n
Manhas has played more than 50 matches in the Indian Premier League.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former domestic player and administrator Mithun Manhas was unanimously elected on Sunday as president of India\u2019s cricket board,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-166312","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}