Indian cricket board expels Dalmiya

CRICKET: JAIPUR, India, Dec 16, 2006 (AFP) - Former world cricket chief Jagmohan Dalmiya was on Saturday expelled from the Indian cricket board on charges of misappropriation of funds.

The former Indian cricket chief is accused of mishandling funds of around 890,000 dollars relating to the 1996 World Cup which India hosted jointly with Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Dalmiya, credited with turning the gentlemen's game into a lucrative global sport, has been given the right to appeal after three years for inclusion in the board, media committee member Rajiv Shukla said.

Shukla said the resolution was moved by board president Sharad Pawar, who suggested to expelling him and barring him from holding any positions in any cricket body.

Dalmiya is currently the president of Cricket Association of Bengal and National Cricket Club of Kolkata. Only these two bodies opposed the move while the remaining associations supported it.

Dalmiya, who was organising secretary of that event, later served as the president of the International Cricket Council for three years from 1997 to 2000.

Since 1983, he had been the most powerful figure in the Indian board until his faction was thrown out by Pawar, a political heavyweight and federal agriculture minister, in a bitter election last year.

Dalmiya denied the charges, saying he had submitted a report which the disciplinary committee did not even read.

"They did not even read it. They are all biased. There is no misappropriation. It is only their misinterpretation," the Press Trust of India news agency quoted him as saying.

But board vice-president Shashank Manohar said that Dalmiya had been given a fair chance.

"He was heard by a full house. But whatever he said carried no weight. We gave him a fair chance," Manohar said after a special general meeting here.

Dalmiya was credited with bringing the World Cup to the Indian sub-continent which has held the event twice in 1987 and 1996.