A day before the historic Supreme Court judgement on July 18 compelled the BCCI to start making wholesale changes in its set-up and rules, former cricketer Saad Bin Jung sent an SMS to petitioner Aditya Verma, saying, “Forget Bihar cricket, you’ve saved Indian cricket. People will rem ember you for that”. That could be an apt summary of the three-year-long battle that Verma (52), secretary of the unrecognised Cricket

Association of Bihar (CAB), one of the several factions in the state, fought in the Bombay High Court and in the apex court.

Verma has another ambition. “I’ve been praying, please let me see the day my Bihar team would again play in the Ranji Trophy,” Verma tells Outlook. “My ambition is to help at least a dozen Bihar cricketers represent India in the next five years.” It’s to be seen if the BCCI includes Bihar (and other non-full member states) in the 2016-17 dom estic tournaments, beginning in September-October, as the SC has given the BCCI six months to implement the Lodha Committee’s recommendations.

It all began in May 2013, when Verma, a former university cricketer, moved the Bombay HC against the ‘flimsy probe’ that the BCCI was trying to conduct into the 2013 IPL betting-fixing case. One of those implicated was Gurunath Meiyappan, sonin-law of then BCCI president N. Srinivasan. Verma, said to be backed by a BCCI lobby, demanded a thorough probe.