In 2013, Ravi Shastri, the director of the Indian cricket team, described him as “arguably the best [president] that the BCCI has had”. Now that the 58-year old Shashank Vyankatesh Manohar has been elected to the presidency of the Board of Control for Cricket in India for a second innings after an eventful first tenure between 2008 and 2013, the mood in the administrative body seems to be upbeat.

As an administrator, Manohar has several achievements to his name. As president of the Vidarbha Cricket Association, he is credited with constructing the state-of-the art VCA Stadium in Nagpur. Cricketing-wise too, during Manohar's first stint as  BCCI president, India grabbed the No 1 rank in Test cricket and went on to win the 2011 Cricket World Cup.

Mr Clean

Most important, Manohar has the reputation for being “Mr Clean”.  Back in 2010, when Indian Premier League commissioner Lalit Modi was the poster-boy of Indian cricket, Manohar was among the first people to speak out against him. Manohar criticised the process by which auctions for two new IPL teams were held. Hours after the IPL 2010 final, Manohar acted swiftly to suspend Modi from the BCCI on charges of corruption. “While we rejoice and celebrate the great success of the IPL season, the alleged acts of individual misdemeanours of Mr Lalit K Modi have brought a bad name to the administration of cricket and the game itself," Manohar was reported to have said.

After the end of his tenure as president, Manohar got even more vociferous. It was 2013, the spot-fixing scandal in the IPL had just erupted and Indian cricket was in chaos. Unlike other administrators who chose to keep mum, Manohar came out all guns blazing, demanding that the BCCI immediately investigate all 75 games of that particular IPL season. Despite his close association with BCCI president N Srinivasan, Manohar did not pull his punches. He squarely blamed the India Cements strongman for the mess in the BCCI and was particularly critical of Srinivasan for refusing to resign as BCCI chief in light of his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan being accused of spot-fixing and betting.

Some whispers

Yet, for all the brouhaha over his appointment, there have whispers from his detractors. As Amol Karhadkar pointed out in a piece for ESPNCricinfo, Manohar is rightly credited for taking action against Modi, but this action came after many months of Modi enjoying a free run. More importantly, a controversial amendment of a clause in the BCCI constitution allowing its office-bearers to own stakes in the IPL was made during Manohar’s tenure.

It is, however, a mark of the high regard in which Manohar is held that he was the consensus candidate after the BCCI's top job became vacant with Jagmohan Dalmiya’s death last month. Manohar was nowhere in the picture at the start of the race: most of the discussion centred around whether the faction headed by politician Sharad Pawar or that headed by Srinivasan would stake their claim for the throne. There were reports of a possible alliance between Pawar and Srinivasan, but things fell into place for Manohar after he emphatically declared that he would not strike any deals with Srinivasan. In a span of few hours, he became the unanimous choice of all the top mandarins in the BCCI. No one was surprised that he was elected unopposed.

At  his first press conference after being elected president, Manohar said that his first priority would be "to clean the image of the board and restore the faith of the cricket-loving fans". In reality, he has to impress more people than Indian fans in India: it is the reputation of the BCCI in the cricketing world that Manohar must seek to burnish. Over the last few years, the BCCI has increasingly garnered a reputation of only being interested in the financial rewards that cricket provides, without any regard for developing the game. Recent corruption scandals have further battered the BCCI. An image-correction exercise is the desperate need of the hour.