No pressure from BCCI to vote for Siva: Nishantha

However, Sri Lanka Cricket secretary Nishantha Ranatunga told MiD DAY that there was no pressure from BCCI. "It is all rubbish. There was no pressure on us from the BCCI to ask our captain to vote for Siva. It was purely our own decision. Siva has played a good amount of cricket. His understanding of the game is fine. So, he was the most deserving candidate," he said yesterday.

Ranatunga, who is the brother of Sri Lanka's 1996 World Cup-winning captain Arjuna, said other boards always have a problem when an Asian is voted.u00a0

"These stories are bound to appear as other boards don't like when an Asian is brought into power," he said. Sivaramakrishnan replaced Tim May, CEO of Federation of International Cricketers Association (FICA) as players' representative on the ICC Cricket Committee.

It is alleged that in the initial vote, May had won 9-1 but the BCCI used its financial might to force the cricket boards of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe into asking their respective captains to vote for Sivaramakrishnan.