Anurag Thakur has been unanimously elected as the second youngest BCCI President, while Ajay Shirke was chosen as Secretary in a smooth transition of power at a time when the world’s richest Cricket Board is sailing through choppy waters. The 41-year-old Thakur replaced Shashank Manohar who quit the position to take up the ICC chairman’s job.

The Maharashtra Cricket Association chief and business magnate Shirke expectedly filled in the Secretary’s post which was left vacant by Thakur’s resignation. Senior BCCI vice-president C K Khanna chaired the Special General Meeting (SGM) and announced Thakur’s name for the top job.

Manohar’s exit from the top post barely seven months into his tenure had necessitated the election of the new chief of the world’s richest and most powerful cricket body.

Although cricket legend Sunil Gavaskar had held the post jointly with another Test cricketer Shivlal Yadav briefly, specifically in charge of IPL affairs, that had been done at the direction of the Supreme Court which ordered then President N Srinivasan to step aside in the wake of the 2013 IPL betting and spot-fixing scandal.

Jagmohan Dalmiya, who was the consensus candidate after Srinivasan’s exit, died in office last year and Manohar took over in October 2015.