Three former India cricketers - Gautam Gambhir, Madan Lal and Sulakshana Naik are in the running to be part of the next cricket advisory committee (CAC). The CAC has been dormant since the previous panel, led by former India captain Kapil Dev, resigned last October.
ESPNcricinfo understands Gambhir has given his consent to be appointed to the panel, while Madan Lal confirmed that he had given it the nod. Naik, the former Mumbai and Indian batsman, said to wait for the news to come out officially. The BCCI is yet to make an announcement on the matter.
It is not clear whether the BCCI will appoint the CAC formally just yet, or wait for the Supreme Court to hear its pending plea on the conflict of interest rules and other amendments it has proposed to the board's constitution. The court was scheduled to hear the case on January 14, but it is yet to list it as part of the next week's roster.
Lal, the former India fast bowler and a 1983 World Cup winner, told ESPNcricinfo: "I was approached in the last week and I gave my consent. I have received no guidelines yet."
Both Gambhir and Lal work as cricket experts for television but they and Naik are not part of any other sate association or IPL franchise. Gambhir had stepped down from the Apex Council of the Delhi & Districts Cricket Association after he was elected as a Member of Parliament last year.
The formation of the CAC was a foremost priority, Sourav Ganguly had said soon after taking charge as BCCI president on October 23 last year. The CAC's primary role is to pick the men's selection panel as per the constitution. But previous CACs have picked the head coaches of both men's and women's teams and Ganguly said the next CAC would carry out that role too.
However, as the weeks went by, Ganguly said that his administration was finding it hard to find suitable candidates for the CAC, a panel which he himself was once part of before being forced to stepped down after being found to be in conflict of interest.
The same conflict of interest issue, Ganguly said, had dissuaded many former players from applying to be part of the CAC and other cricket committees, which, as per the Lodha Committee reforms, need to be made up of cricketers. Even Kapil Dev and his panel members - former India batsman Anshuman Gaekwad and former women's captain Shanta Rangaswamy - stepped down in reaction to the conflict of interest charges against them.
The charges against the previous CAC members barring Ganguly came from the same complainant - Sanjeev Gupta, a life member at the Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association. In all instances, Gupta said that each of the CAC members was holding more than one position in Indian cricket, which was a clear violation of the conflict of interest rule that permitted only one post per person.