Anurag Thakur was unanimously elected as the BCCI’s *second youngest President in the Board’s Special General Meeting (SGM) in Mumbai on Sunday, replacing Shashank Manohar who quit the position to take up the ICC chief’s job.
Update: The previous version of this report said he was the youngest ever, it has now been corrected)
The 41-year-old, who is also a BJP MP in Lok Sabha, will be taking over the reins of the embattled Board in rather tough times as the BCCI is facing heat from the Supreme Court to implement the Justice R M Lodha Committee’s recommendations for sweeping reforms.
Thakur, who resigned as the Secretary of the Board, got the signatures of all six east zone units in his BCCI presidential nomination form as he completed the formalities in presence of former India captain and CAB president Sourav Ganguly.
Thakur, incidentally, will go into the books as the first first-class cricketer to turn BCCI president after Raj Singh Dungarpur lay down office in 1998-99.
Although cricket legend Sunil Gavaskar had held the post jointly with another Test cricketer Shivlal Yadav briefly, specifically in charge of IPL affairs, that had been done at the direction of the Supreme Court which ordered then President N Srinivasan to step aside in the wake of the 2013 IPL betting and spot-fixing scandal.
Thakur filed his nomination in the presence of Ganguly, BCCI’s GM (Game Development) Ratnakar Shetty and probable secretary Ajay Shirke.
Manohar’s exit from the top post barely seven months into his tenure has necessitated the election of the new chief of the world’s richest and most powerful cricket body.
He was elected as ICC’s first independent chairman on May 12.
Maharashtra Cricket Association chief and business magnate Shirke will replace Thakur as the board secretary.