Cricket: "New Cricket Development Committee Chief is Ganguly"

Former India captain Sourav Ganguly was on Saturday appointed chairman of the new Cricket Development Committee that will have the power to assess accountability of Bengal selectors at the end of the season.

The 37-year-old will lead the Cricket Association of Bengal's (CAB) panel which consists of a three other former cricketers.

"We have decided to form the committee which will also have Arun Lal, Ashok Malhotra and Pranob Roy as the other members," CAB chief Jagmohan Dalmiya told reporters after their working committee meeting at the Eden Gardens here.

Though Ganguly in the CAB Annual General Meeting on July 31 represented Mohammedan Sporting club, today he attended the working committee meet under the banner of little known Bhukailash Sporting Club.

Ganguly, however, refused to talk to the media.

Giving details about the panel, Dalmiya said, "The committee will receive report from the selectors (senior and junior) at the end of every cricket season, assess the accountability of the selectors and will make necessary recommendation as well."

The committee will also deal with the issues of umpiring standards, technical aspects of all the tournaments conducted by the CAB, and will have advisory powers in all the cricket related matters at various levels to improve the standard of the game in the state, Dalmiya said.

The committee under Ganguly, however, would not have the power to appoint umpires, Dalmiya said.

"The committee will prepare a master plan for improvement of the game at all levels -- school, college, university, club, district and office -- and submit it to the working committee," he said.

"All the members are responsible people and know what is wrong and right," he added.

Incidentally, there was a Cricket Committee which has been suspended after the formation of CDC.

"At the moment we have suspended the Cricket Committee because there will be so much overlapping. Cricket Committee will come in some other form which we will discuss later," said Dalmiya.

The CAB also appointed Goutam Dasgupta as chairman of Infrastructure Development Committee and Russi Jeejeebhoy for the Talent Research Development wing, among others.

Shivaji Ray will lead a coaching panel that will also have Snehashish Ganguly, Shibaji Banerjee, Samir Dasgupta and Sabyasachi Chowdhury.

Other committees will be headed by Prabir Chakraborty (tournament), Subrata Banerjee (umpires), Chitrak Mitra (finance), Barid Baran Sarkar (stadium).