Biswal is new IPL chairman

Chennai, Sep 29 (IANS) Former national selector Ranjib Biswal was Sunday appointed the new chairman of the lucrative Indian Premier League (IPL) at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) here.

Biswal has been a long-time loyalist of president Narayanaswami Srinivasan, who was re-elected at the meeting for a third year in office.

Biswal, who is from Odisha, will be replacing Rajeev Shukla as the IPL chairman. Shukla had resigned as the IPL chairman after the spot-fixing and the betting scandal broke out in May.

Biswal has also been a team manager on numerous tours and apparently he piped Gundappa Viswanath and interim board chief Jagmohan Dalmiya to the post.

Biswal was currently National Cricket Academy (NCA) chairman and Kerala’s TC Mathew will now replace him in that post.

Biswal played first-class cricket for Orissa between 1987 and 1996 as an all-rounder. He has 2,170 runs in his career and has taken 153 wickets and had also captained the U-19 team in 1989.