Hectic parleys and backroom manoeuvring continued among Board of Control for Cricket in India bigwigs but there was still no breakthrough in the leadership logjam to find a consensus candidate for the President's post left vacant by the demise of Jagmohan Dalmiya.
The late night meeting in Nagpur on Wednesday between two former BCCI chiefs and known foes N Srinivasan and Sharad Pawar has added a new dimension to the succession battle.
It is learnt that two have come together to cobble up the numbers even as the BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur's faction tried to muster support for their presidential candidate Rajeev Shukla.
According to top sources, Srinivasan is learnt to have expressed his support to Pawar or his nominee. In return Srinivasan wants that his tenure as ICC chairman should continue unhindered.
The Tamil Nadu strongman is apprehensive that if the Thakur group retains control of the Board, they may nominate a new ICC chairman from India in his place.
Srinivasan had called a meeting of his loyalists in Bengaluru to gauge his strength. While five of the six East Zone members had skipped the meeting, only Odisha Cricket Association (OCA) attended the meeting although their secretary Asirbad Behera, who is the voter, chose to stay back.
While KSCA represented by Brijesh Patel and Kerala CA represented by TC Mathew were there, it is not clear as to how many units actually attended this show of strength meeting called by Srinivasan.
The CAB had already clarified that they won't attend any meeting till Dalmiya's condolence meeting gets over on October 2.
National Cricket Club, which is like Dalmiya's family club, represented by his friend KP Kajaria also were not present. Kajaria himself is not keeping well these days.
While Thakur faction is in favour of Shukla taking over as the president, it does not have the clear majority to ensure victory for the Congress MP. The appointment of former India captain Sourav Ganguly has also changed the power equations in the Board with indications that he may favour the Pawar faction. Although the CAB had been traditionally opposed to Pawar because of his feud with Dalmiya but things appear to be changing quickly in BCCI's power politics.
Similarly Pawar group also have four committed voters in Mumbai CA, Vidarbha CA (Shashank Manohar), Mahrashtra CA (Ajay Shirke) and Saurashtra CA (Niranjan Shah). However, some of these units are not too happy about his sudden association with Srinivasan.
They are arguing that they had resigned from the BCCI in the wake of the spot-fixing scandal to protest against Srinivasan and it will be a loss of face for them if they extend support to Pawar's alliance with the controversial administrator.