It was fitting that a metaphorical toast would be raised to Jagmohan Dalmiya at the Taj Bengal hotel here on Tuesday. Not far from his home, this was the scene of Dalmiya\u2019s triumphs and also the longest, most lonely walk of his life when he lost control of the Indian cricket board.<\/p>\n
The evening began with Thilanga Sumathipala, the Sri Lanka board chief, praising Dailmiya\u2019s negotiation skills and ended with Kapil Dev calling him his hero and sport\u2019s best administrator in 50 years.<\/p>\n
It is difficult to encapsulate the storied life of a man who changed the economics of cricket for India and the world in two speeches but Sumathipala and Kapil can\u2019t be faulted for not trying at the first Jagmohan Dalmiya Annual Conclave organised by the Cricket Association of Bengal.<\/p>\n
Sumathipala\u2019s anecdotes about \u201cJaggu\u201d took the audience back to the days of PILCOM (the three-country committee formed for the 1996 World Cup). Stating that he needed special permission to leave the country because the budget session was on, Sumathipala, who is the deputy speaker of the Sri Lanka Parliament, recalled how Dalmiya got an India-Pakistan team to play in Sri Lanka and show the world that life does go on even days after the country\u2019s central bank is bombed.<\/p>\n
With Mohammed Azharuddin in the room, Sumathipala, who is also the only surviving PILCOM director, narrated how \u201cin five minutes\u201d \u2018Jaggu\u2019 also solved the problem of getting \u2018Azza\u2019 to lead a team that had Wasim Akram.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe called up (Pakistan\u2019s) Intikhab Alam and said being manager of such a team is the most important thing and got him to agree that Akram would play under Azza,\u201d said Sumathipala, 53. \u201cI think he was born as a negotiator\u2026one who had the knack of getting everyone under one roof,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
For someone who didn\u2019t make a good first impression on him, it was a measure of how much Dalmiya grew on India\u2019s greatest all-rounder that Kapil\u2019s tribute was studded by applause from the packed house that included the India and Sri Lanka teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf cricketers have a good life now, it is because of him… I think he is the best administrator in sport in the last 50 years,\u201d said the man for whom Eden once chorused \u2018No Kapil, no Test.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we were playing, we would always look at the wages of English and Australian cricketers and wonder when we would manage to come close. In 20 years, they are the ones looking to earn like Indian cricketers. The credit for this goes to my hero,\u201d said Kapil, 58.<\/p>\n
\u201cDalmiya wasn\u2019t the best of speakers but knew how to write a contract. He was the first board official who sought a dialogue with the players. Before that, there were only orders. The 1980s batch of Indian cricketers would remain grateful to him for that,\u201d said Kapil.<\/p>\n
If Sumathipala ended by batting for unity in Asian cricket boards because only then would the game benefit, Kapil, after praising Virat Kohli for \u201cbringing about a big change in fitness\u201d, asked the India captain to take the team to where it has never gone. Taken together, that is exactly what Dalmiya would have wanted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was fitting that a metaphorical toast would be raised to Jagmohan Dalmiya at the Taj Bengal hotel here on Tuesday. Not far from his home, this was the scene of Dalmiya\u2019s triumphs and also the longest, most lonely walk of his life when he lost control of the Indian cricket board. The evening began […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10252,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10253,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10251\/revisions\/10253"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}