Vengsarkar is new chairman of selectors

As was widely predicted, Dilip Vengsarkar, the former Test cricketer, was appointed chairman of the national selection committee. The other new face on the panel is SL Venkatapathy Raju, the former left-arm spinner, while Sanjay Jagdale, Bhupinder Singh Sr and Ranjib Biswal continue on the panel.

In a separate development Kapil Dev, the former Indian allrounder, has been appointed director of the National Cricket Academy. He replaced Sunil Gavaskar, whose term ended with the Annual General Meeting, which was held at the Cricket Club of India in Mumbai. The AGM of the board, normally a two-day affair, where the main item on the agenda is the election of the principal office bearers of the board, ended in less than a day this time.

Sharad Pawar (president), Niranjan Shah (secretary), N Srinivasan (treasurer) and MP Pandove (joint secretary) were all re-elected unopposed, and under the revised constitution will serve a term of two years. Professor Ratnakar Shetty, who has served as the executive secretary in-charge, has been appointed the Administrative Head of the BCCI - for five years, which will carry him through to the 2011 World Cup which will be held in India - and on a full-time, paid basis.

"There will be no elections next year for these posts and the selectors can get an extension of an extra year after the completion of their two year term," said Srinivasan. Of the five vice-presidents of the board, four - Lalit Modi (North), Dayanand Narvekar (South), Chirayu Amin (West) and Shashank Manohar (Central) - were re-elected, while the incumbent from the east zone, KP Kajariya, who did not seek re-election, was replaced by Rajeev Shukla.

Srinivas Venkataraghavan was appointed the director of the Umpires Development Programme. "He will have five retired Test umpires, one from each zone, to assist him in raising the standard of umpiring, and to facilitate the standardisation of umpiring in India," said Srinivasan. At the moment India is unrepresented in the ICC's elite panel, and the BCCI is keen to change this.

In the course of the AGM the BCCI also heard petitions from the Pondicherry Cricket Association and the Cricket Association of Pondicherry seeking associate membership to the BCCI. "The members decided to unanimously regret the application for associate membership of the Pondicherry Cricket Association and the Cricket Association of Pondicherry," said Srinivasan. The BCCI constituted a committee to look into similar applications from other states comprising Shashank Manohar, Sanjay Jagdale, Arun Jaitley, Shivlal Yadav and Ratnakar Shetty.

It was also decided that the CK Nayudu Awards function will take place on November 4, the same day on which an executive board meeting of the ICC takes place in India. It was also proposed that the BCCI headquarters, in the Mumbai Cricket Association premises at the Wankhede Stadium, would be inaugurated on the same day.

In another initiative the BCCI will host a South Asian Universities tournament, to be conducted from February 4 to 8, with university teams from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh taking part.