Astute, ruthlessly ambitious, and the one who aimed for the sky, Lalit Modi's eventful stint in Indian cricket firmament, with its innumerable ups and downs, truly defines the age-old saying 'life is a roller-coaster'.
If he is credited with changing the face of world cricket by conceiving the Indian Premier League, the former IPL commissioner also found himself at the centre of many a controversy over the past three years.
The 49-year-old cricket administrator's life today took another turn, for the worse, as he was slapped with a life ban by the BCCI after its disciplinary committee found him guilty on eight charges of "indiscipline and misconduct".
The exit has been as dramatic as his entry into the Indian cricket fraternity.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that Modi's IPL consolidated BCCI's position as the financial superpower in world cricket. While the purists whined, it prompted the ICC to look for ways to bring innovations in the traditional forms -- Tests and ODIs.
If they were not enough, the multi-million-dollar franchise-based domestic league, which Modi executed for the first time in 2008, also helped cricket establish some sort of a foothold on the global sporting map, so dominated by football and tennis.