All five members in Dalmiya's panel were elected to the Trust Board. They are P B Dutta (Chairman), Saradindu Pal, Rabi Mitra, Debabrata Bhattacharjee and Bablu Koley. Dalmiya, who remained at the helm of affairs of CAB for 13 years before bowing out of office in December 2006, had fought court battles with the BCCI over allegations of misappropriation of PILCOM funds.

"This might give him the toehold he badly required to get into the thick of things in the BCCI and make the powers - that-be bit uncomfortable," one of the Dalmiya supporters said outside the Eden Gardens as cricket aficionados thronged the park.

"Sourav is perhaps the best cricketer the state has produced who showed the resilience to stage comebacks into the national team. But Dalmiya has shown his ability to bounce back in equal measure", he said.

While Dalmiya's supporters had pointed at Bengal cricket's abysmal fall under the Mukherjee regime, the latter's campaigners had gone around saying that if the former chief was voted back to power it would mean Bengal might lose out on international matches and monetary grants.

Dalmiya praises IPL
Jagmohan Dalmiya termed the Indian Premier League (IPL) conducted by the BCCI an "amazing success". Dalmiya said, "IPL was an amazing success and it is here to stay. Since CAB is one of the staging associations, I have to see that we run it properly."

Regarding improvement of cricket in Bengal, the newly-elected CAB president said he was ready to sit with former India captain Sourav Ganguly for the improvement of the sport in the state.

He said, if necessary, he would seek Sourav's suggestions to take Bengal cricket forward. The state of cricket here has been poor with the Bengal team relegated to plate division from elite division this year in Ranji Trophy.

Asked for comments on Ganguly's reported comment that he would leave Bengal if Dalmiya returns to the CAB, he said, "It is a dead issue now. Let's look forward and try how to improve the sport in Bengal."