The biennial elections of the Mumbai Cricket Association on June 17 will "see a handful of political heavyweights of national and regional parties in the fray," according to G. Viswanath of THE HINDU. For the first time, "perhaps in the history of the 80-year-old provincial cricket association," a group named Cricket First officially announced that the Shiv Sena is not only campaigning for it, but it has also "given it two leaders -- Mumbai South-Central Lok Sabha MP Rahul Shewale and Ovala-Majiwada (Thane Dist) MLA Pratap Sarnaik -- as candidates" for the managing committee and VP. The ruling group, called the Pawar-Mahaddalkar Group, has "fielded the city's" Bharatiya Janata Party Chief and Maharashtra Legislative Assembly member Ashish Shelar for the post of VP. National Congress Party founder Sharad Pawar is the candidate for the president’s post. The cricketers in the two groups are Dilip Vengsarkar (Pawar Group), Abey Kuruvilla, Praveen Amre, Lalchand Rajput and Sanjay Patil (Cricket First), but "strangely neither group has fielded a woman candidate" (THE HINDU, 6/15).
