For once, Lalit Modi loses at cricket

In his first major setback in a long while, Lalit Modi has failed to get re-elected as president of the Rajasthan Cricket Association.

Modi, 44, remains chief commissioner of the Indian Premier League (IPL), the multi-billion, football-style, franchise-based domestic cricket league that he conceived and implemented and transformed the game.He also remains vice-president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), to which post he was elected to in 2005, as the youngest-ever. (He’s also vice-president of the Punjab Cricket Association).

However, say industry sources, his position as IPL chief is linked to his BCCI post, which is in turn linked to his being head of the RCA.

A few years earlier, it was Modi’s win in the RCA elections that had set off a series of successes that made him one of the most powerful controllers of Indian cricket.

Observers await with interest the response of the man whom ex-English cricket captain, Mike Atherton, described as “ruthless”.

There was an attempt just ahead of the RCA elections to have him booked on charges of cheating and forgery, for allegedly reneging on a public promise to donate Rs 6 crore from IPL sponsors for the victims of last May’s bomb blasts at Jaipur. That was after another allegation of forgery in a land purchase in the state. Modi dismissed all the charges as bogus.