Venkatesh Prasad named new chief of Karnataka Cricket, reiterates his commitment to bringing big-ticket cricket back to Chinnswamy.
The Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) has elected former Indian seamer Venkatesh Prasad as its president. The vice-president is Sujith Somasunder, a former head of education at the BCCI’s Centre of Excellence who played two ODIs in 1996.
Prasad trounced his opponent, KN Shanth Kumar, 749-558, with the complete support of old colleagues Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath, among others. Prasad reaffirmed his resolve to collaborate with the state administration to bring back “Chinnaswamy’s lost glory” when surrounded by his teammates.
“First and foremost, this is a victory for the sport of cricket,” Prasad said. “Secondly, this is a victory for all the members who wanted a change, all the people who wanted international cricket to come back to the M Chinnaswamy Stadium.”
Since 11 people were killed in a stampede outside the venue during a Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) IPL win celebration on June 4, the venue has not played host to a major game. Since then, the BCCI has preferred to hold the Duleep Trophy and ‘A’ series between India and South Africa at the Centre of Excellence, making the KSCA unsuitable for cricket in Bengaluru.
Five women’s ODI World Cup matches, including the final, were slated to take place at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium. However, they were forced to leave after the previous KSCA administration failed to get the required approvals from the state government and was functioning without a treasurer and secretary, who had resigned on moral grounds following the stampede.
In the wake of the stampede, the Karnataka government created the Justice John Michael D’Cunha Commission, whose findings Prasad has directed his team to review in order to determine what more adjustments they may make.
Deputy chief minister of Karnataka DK Shivakumar, a member of the KSCA and one of the early voting, pledged on Sunday to return the IPL to the Chinnaswamy.
Prasad is one of the few former Indian players working in cricket management. Sourav Ganguly, Prasad’s former India colleague and captain, was unanimously chosen president of the Cricket Association of Bengal, while Mithun Mahnas, a former captain of Delhi and a cricket administrator in Jammu & Kashmir, was recently elected president of the BCCI. Both Saurabh Tiwary and Shahbaz Nadeem, who both had brief careers in India and a substantial body of work in local cricket, have assumed leadership roles in Jharkhand’s cricket administration.