At a different venue, the Cricket Centre at the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) headquarters, the top guns of the cricket board, including president Shashank Manohar and secretary N Srinivasan, gathered to work out the options available to them ahead of the Governing Council meeting.
Also at the Cricket Centre was a meeting to discuss the dates and venue for the second edition of the Champions League, a coming together that was notable because of the absence of Modi, who is also the chairman of Champions League T20.
Present at the discussions were Gerald Majola and James Sutherland, representatives of Cricket South Africa and Cricket Australia, respectively, who, along with the BCCI/IPL, are the founding members of the Champions League.
Modi, Mallya meet
Later in the afternoon, Mallya and Modi had a meeting, triggering further wild speculation that Modi was on the verge of putting in his papers.
Unconfirmed reports of a 15-minute telephonic conversation between Manohar and Modi, supposedly their first direct contact in 15 days, were squashed by sources in the know, and Modi’s tweets late in the evening comprehensively scuttled talk of a “compromise formula”, supposedly arrived at during a late-night meeting on Friday involving Pawar and Manohar.
Modi had attempted to put sentiment over reason on Friday by appealing for a five-day extension of the convening of the Governing Council, an appeal that was emphatically turned down by Manohar.
“A decision will be taken on April 26 at the Governing Council meeting,” Manohar told newsmen, reinforcing the belief that Modi is on his last legs in his high-profile post.
Point of interest
The other big point of interest ahead of the Governing Council meeting on Monday is how well attended the closing ceremony and Sunday’s final of IPL-III will be.
By staying away from the IPL awards on Friday night, the top brass of the BCCI had illustrated the irreparable distance between them and Modi; an encore is very much on the cards, unless a solution is worked out inside the next several hours.
It will be embarrassing to the competition, not to mention Indian cricket, if neither the BCCI president nor the secretary, who is the owner of one of the finalists, is present during the final day of the six-and-half-week extravaganza that is primed for a colourful finish with performances by Lata Mangeshkar and A R Rahman at the closing ceremony.
Not a surprise
Modi’s continued defiance hasn’t come as any surprise to the people who know him well, though his decision not to move court on Friday against the calling of the Governing Counil meeting by Srinivasan and subsequent events through the evening seemed to suggest he was at the end of his tether.
By breathing fire and daring the BCCI to take action against him, Modi has made sure the last word in this unseemly and messy battle hasn’t been said yet.