Vijay Tagore/DNA
 
Mumbai, Novg 14: The Calcutta High Court order against the former and current mandarins of the Indian cricket Board may have come at a wrong time for Jagmohan Dalmiya.

The former strongman of Indian cricket is unlikely to rejoice too much over the High Court’s order to its registrar to file criminal cases against his arch-adversaries, including past BCCI president Sharad Pawar and the incumbent Shashank Manohar.

The order has come at a time when there seems to be a thaw in the relationship between Dalmiya, a former president of the BCCI, and Pawar. Since their meeting at a party hosted by Pawar on September 26 in Mumbai, the anti-Dalmiya rhetoric has been either non-existent or negligible.

Pawar’s categorical statement at this year’s AGM that the Board will not bring Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) into the picture in its fight against Dalmiya was a comforting assurance for the former ICC president as he was saved from a severe embarrassment on home pitch.

Not long ago when Dalmiya was the CAB president, the Pawar dispensation had imposed sanctions on the state association, seeking to recover the Rs 47 crore which the BCCI claims was misappropriated by its former president.

Following the court order, six big-wigs of the Board — N Srinivasan, Niranjan Shah, Ratnakar Shetty and Chirayu Amin besides Pawar and Manohar — would now have a common factor to be aggrieved about and fight against. That is not good news for Dalmiya, who has been striving to come back into the mainstream of the BCCI administration.

Understandably, Dalmiya was not willing to make any statement on the order. But he was caught by the local media at the CAB office in Eden Gardens where he was presiding over the association’s working committee meeting. After a brief statement, he has not answered any media questions since then.

A CAB official and a close aide has admitted as much when he said Dalmiya didn’t expect the order to be so late. “It was the court order on a case filed some 18 months back. At that time the situation was different from what it is today. He did not expect the order to be so late,” he said. On the court’s order of the criminal case, he said Dalmiya has nothing to do with that.

The verdict, however, has surprised rather than rattled the Board officials. That it was passed ex-parte — for alleged forgery of documents — is something that has taken them by surprise.

 “I’ve never received any summons from the court. I do not know what it is all about,” Manohar, the current Board president told DNA. Similar was the reply of his predecessor.

 “I’ve never filed any affidavit in any court. I’m yet to see the order. I will consult my lawyers,” Pawar told DNA.

Once the order reaches them some time next week, there could be more than a mere response to from the Board’s side.