Kapil Dev to Deliver the Inaugural Dalmiya Lecture
Oct 24, 2017 at 3:47 PM
1983 World Cup winning captain Kapil Dev will deliver the first Jagmohan Dalmiya Memorial Lecture which will be held on November 14. The event will also see President of Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) Thilanga Sumathipala express his thoughts.
Members of both Indian and Sri Lankan team members will be in attendance on that special day. The CAB will also felicitate a handful of long-serving members of the Association. The names will be revealed shortly.
The inaugural lecture will be an annual event, the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) stated in a release.
“The CAB wished that an international administrator speaks about the Late Mr Dalmiya’s role as an administrator and on administration itself. That apart, as he also had an excellent rapport with cricketers, we wanted an eminent former cricketer to speak about that aspect of his persona and on the game as well,” son Avishek, joint secretary of the CAB, said.
Jagmohan Dalmiya was the pioneer of the huge money making business which cricket has become now. He tapped into the huge potential of the cricket-mad subcontinental countries – Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh – and successfully shifted the centre of power from the pockets of England and Australia to India and its neighbours.
In his glorious administrative career, he served as the president of the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) as well as the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) and the International Cricket Council (ICC).
Dalmiya joined the BCCI in 1979 representing the CAB and took him very little time to jump the line and become one of the most influential names in cricket administration. Within four years, he was the treasurer of the CAB, and along with bureaucrat Inderjit Singh Bindra and administrator NKP Salve, he successfully managed to win the 1987 World Cup hosting rights with a huge majority.
He also played a significant role in bringing South Africa back to the international fold after the end of the apartheid. South Africa’s revival in international cricket was opposed by then ICC president Clyde Walcott. However, Dalmiya ensured South Africa Cricket was brought back to life, and in 1991 arranged a three-match ODI tour on India.
His reputation only grew from there on, and he held a firm grip over Indian cricket till the end of the first decade of 2000.
The media described Dalmiya as ”the man responsible for commercialising cricket and making BCCI the richest board in the world.”
He got credited for putting an end to the “monopoly” of ICC cresting a commercial presence of cricket in the Indian subcontinent in international cricket. Thanks to his work, which was often controversial, he earned the nickname “Machiavelli of Indian cricket”, the “master of realpolitik”, the “king of comebacks” in the media world.