BCCI president Jagmohan Dalmiya breathed his last in a Kolkata hospital on Sunday. He was 75.
Dalmiya was thought to be stable and recuperating after suffering a cardiac arrest last week, but that battle has been, unfortunately, lost, with the BCCI supremo passing away on Sunday evening.
"Dalmiya died of internal gastrointestinal bleeding and internal organ failure," a hospital source told the Times of India.
"At 6 pm in the evening his condition deteriorated and shortly afterwards he suffered a massive cardiac arrest from which he could not recover," sources from the Cricket Association of Bengal said.
The BCCI president was admitted to the BM Birla hospital on Thursday night after complaining of chest pain, and reports a day later suggested he was in stable condition.
"There was a clot which has been removed, and his condition has improved," doctors at the hospital had said on Friday. "He is in a stable condition now and he will be closely monitored for next 72 hours.
"Multiple lesions were observed with total occlusion of the left anterior descending coronary artery."
A lot of the BCCI bigwigs had rushed to the hospital to show their support for Dalmiya, with Sourav Ganguly, the former India captain, among them as well.
However, when it looked like the 75-year-old might pull through, the bad news came on Sunday.
"On behalf of all the members of BCCI, I wish to submit our condolences to the bereaved family of Mr. Dalmiya. As a visionary and a father figure of Indian cricket, Mr. Dalmiya worked towards the development of the game of cricket in India. The cricketing fraternity will miss him dearly," BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur, who was running affairs at the BCCI as Dalmiya struggled with his health, said in a statement.
"Mr. Dalmiya played a significant part in positioning Indian cricket at the global level and the astute administrator in him, guided Indian cricket to greater heights. His untiring efforts will be remembered for generations to come and his contribution to Indian cricket will remain unparalleled."
Dalmiya was in his second innings as the BCCI president, after winning the elections following the N Srinivasan furore. BCCI were trying to move on from the scandals that engulfed the biggest cricketing board in the world over the past few years, and now it looks like that pause button will be in play again.
No doubt, what the future holds, immediate and beyond, will come to light in the next few days – the BCCI secretary is supposed to call a special general body meeting within 15 days to elect a new president, from the same zone -- but now is the time to mourn the man who took Indian cricket to another level.
Undoubtedly, Dalmiya was one of the major drivers behind India's rise in world cricket, and if not for his work behind the scenes, we might not be viewing cricket as we do right now, and that will be his legacy.
