10 Big Changes Proposed By New BCCI President Anurag Thakur

Top priority is finding India’s next coach.

Anurag Thakur was unanimously elected the new BCCI President on Sunday. (Photo: PTI)

Anurag Thakur has been unanimously elected as the youngest BCCI President post-Independence, taking up the most high-profile position in Indian cricket administration at a time when the Board is sailing in choppy waters. The 41-year-old replaced Shashank Manohar who quit the position to take up the ICC chairman’s job.

Following are the major announcements made by newly-elected president Anurag Thakur on reforms/measures set to be undertaken by the BCCI:

• BCCI to give advertisement for National team’s chief coach’s post and the deadline to submit applications will be June 10.
  
• Rs 100 Crore earmarked for one-year water conservation project using Solar Panels, trying ‘Rain Water Harvesting’ and ‘Sewage Treatment’ to conserve water during crisis like drought.
  
• Rs 5 Crore corpus created for next 5 years to help the visually challenged and deaf and dumb cricketers.
  
• Santosh Rangnekar appointed new Chief Financial Officer (CFO) as part of reforms suggested by Lodha Panel.
  

• Minimum 10 percent free tickets for international matches allocated for girl students, specially-abled persons.
  
• Specially designated seating area for the physically challenged persons.
  
• All stadiums in India to have seats with numbers for convenience of spectators.
  
• All state units told to create official Facebook/Twitter accounts as well as have websites wherein they can engage fans by uploading relevant information and statistics.
  
• Creating ‘Mobile Coaching App’ licensed by BCCI which can be used in cricket academies in remote areas where they can get access to state-of-the-art coaching as 70 percent associated with these academies have access to smartphones.
  
• Implementation of Central Contracts for India’s women cricketers and a detailed report sought within a month.