Shashank Manohar ignores Anurag Thakur, says he will not react to BCCI president's comments

New Delhi: The International Cricket Council (ICC) chairman Shashank Manohar refused to be drawn into a war of words with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) president Anurag Thakur, who blames him for abandoning the board when it needed him the most.

“I am not going to react to everything that he (Thakur) says. I have explained whatever I had to say,” Manohar told HT.

Manohar returned to lead BCCI again, succeeding the late Jagmohan Dalmiya as the president of the most powerful cricket body in the world in October last year.

But the 59-year-old lawyer from Nagpur soon left the Indian board in May early this year, to become the new independent chair main of ICC.

Since then, he has taken stands which reportedly go against the interests of Indian board, including the curb the disproportionate powers and profit of the so-called “big three”, India, Australia and England.

But Manohar's relationship with his parent body came to a head-on clash over after saying that he is under no compulsion to look after the BCCI's interests.

And on Saturday, Thakur made a no-holds-barred attack on Manohar, accusing him of abandoning the Indian board when it needed him like the "captain of a sinking ship".

It doesn't matter if I am disappointed or not with the ICC chairman's statements. But I need to convey, as a President, what my Board members feel," an angry Thakur told mediapersons.