Former BCCI GM of Cricket Operations M.V. Sridhar passes away at the age of 51

Former Hyderabad Ranji cricketer and ex-secretary of the Hyderabad Cricket Association, Dr. M.V. Sridhar passed away at the age of 51 on Wednesday. Dr. Sridhar suffered a major heart attack in the afternoon on Monday in Hyderabad and was taken to Hospital immediately where he was declared ‘brought dead’. Sridhar has contributed immensely to Indian cricket and was also the manager of the Indian team when the infamous controversy involving Australia’s Andrew Symonds and India’s Harbhajan Singh took place, also known as the ‘monkey-gate’.

He was also the tournament director of the T20 World Cup which was held in India. It was only last year that Sridhar resigned as the BCCI general manager, Cricket Operations.  HCA Secretary T. Seshnarayan termed it as a huge personal loss and also to the game.

Outstanding cricketer

Sridhar has scored tons of runs playing for Hyderabad. In 97 First-class matches, ‘Doc’ as he was commonly called, scored 6701 runs at a healthy average of 48.91 along with a massive 366 to his name. He has also scored more than 900 runs in his List A career.

Controversies

Sridhar was involved in quite a number of controversies over the last year. The Asian Cricket Council had announced as per their policy that the Asia Cup can feature only the players eligible for the 2018 U-19 World Cup, but under Sridhar’s charge, ineligible candidates were picked up the junior selectors. It resulted in the selection committee being forced to address the issue as the error was noticed after Sridhar was forced to hand over the Under-19 and women’s cricket charge to Ratnakar Shetty.

Last month, Sridhar ruled out Duleep Trophy from India’s domestic calendar, which didn’t go down too well with the technical committee, as it was decided that the tournament will be played with the pink ball. Technical committee chairman Sourav Ganguly slammed the move and eventually it was included in the calendar.