Political heavyweight Sharad Pawar wrested control of India's cricket board on Tuesday, ending Jagmohan Dalmiya's hold on the country's richest sports body for more than two decades.
Federal agriculture minister Pawar defeated Dalmiya's incumbent nominee, Ranbir Singh Mahendra, in the election for the president of the faction-ridden Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) here.
The election was conducted by India's former chief election commissioner, T.S. Krishnamurthy, on the orders of the Supreme Court after the voting was put off in September due to legal wrangles.
"The margin was 20-11 but the announcement will be made later by Krishnamurthy," a BCCI official told AFP after emerging from the voting hall.
Pawar, 64, won the election on his second attempt after losing out to Mahendra last year through the then president Dalmiya's casting vote when the secret ballot was tied 15-15 with one vote disqualified.
Pawar, a former chief minister of the western state of Maharashtra, currently heads the Mumbai Cricket Association.
Politicians have ruled the cash-rich BCCI in the past, but this was the first instance since Dalmiya's induction to the board in 1979 that he or his nominee had lost an election.
The 65-year-old Dalmiya, a former president of the International Cricket Council, is a known master of realpolitik and financial wizardy largely credited with turning the gentlemen's game into a lucrative global sport.
The BCCI has assets worth around 250 million dollars and the latest annual report gave its gross earnings for the year 2004-05 as 46 million dollars.
Dalmiya was credited with bringing the World Cup to the Indian sub-continent which has held the event twice in 1987 and 1996.