Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) president Jagmohan Dalmiya, 75 who was admitted to the B.M. Birla Hospital on Thursday night after complaining of chest pain, died on Sunday evening at around 9 p.m in Kolkata. However, Jagmohan Dalmiya will be  remembered forever as the man who made Indian cricket a self-sufficient entity, drove BCCI forward as a commercial powerhouse and engineered a shift of power base from its spiritual home at Lord’s to Kolkata’s Eden Gardens.

Born on May 30, 1940, in Kolkata, Dalmiya joined the BCCI in 1979 and quickly established himself as a new breed of the administrator who was determined to develop the game commercially. In his chequered administrative career, he saw it all: the good, the bad and the proverbial ugly. Along with I.S. Bindra, Dalmiya helped to bring the World Cup to India in 1987.  He went on to become ICC president from 1997-2000 and BCCI president from 2001 to 2004, a period which also saw him secure another World Cup for the sub-continent.

His biggest gift to Indian cricket was to strike a multimillion television deal with World Tel in the early 90’s that went a long way in making BCCI the richest cricketing body in the world. If Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket was the revolution that rocked the traditional cricket establishment of Australia, it was the astute businessman from Kolkata, who understood the potential of India becoming commercially a global powerhouse of cricket.

Dalmiya was the brain behind India co-hosting the Reliance World Cup in 1987 and then the Wills World Cup in 1996. Dalmiya was subsequently accused of embezzling money related to the 1996 World Cup and ousted from the Cricket Association of Bengal as well as the BCCI. Dalmiya fought back through the courts and eventually returned as CAB president in 2008. Two years later, the BCCI withdrew its case against him when the board removed Lalit Modi as IPL chairman.

In June 2013, he was appointed as the interim president of the BCCI after N. Srinivasan stepped aside till the probe on Srinivasan’s son-in-law’s alleged involvement in spot-fixing in the 2013 Indian Premier League was completed. Srinivasan resumed the presidency in October 2013. On 2 March 2015, Dalmiya returned as BCCI president after a 10-year gap replacing N. Srinivasan. However, this time his tenure was affected by poor health and the board was effectively being run by Secretary Anurag Thakur.

For Dalmiya, cricket was more of a vocation as he was a wicketkeeper for his club Rajasthan. Once he knew that cricket as a career was not possible, he took the keen interest in his family business set by father MN Dalmiya Constructions.

Australian cricketer and commentator Ian Chappell has said of Dalmiya: “He has a vision for the game’s progress that I haven’t heard enunciated by any other so-called leader among cricket officials.”

In 2005, he was awarded the International Journal of the History of Sports Achievement award for administrative excellence in global sport. In 1996, the BBC declared him to be one of the world’s top six sports executives.

Jagmohan Dalmiya might have passed away, but he had certainly left an ever-lasting legacy in Indian and world cricket administration. He was also nicknamed in the media as the Machiavelli of Indian cricket, master of realpolitik, the master of comebacks and so on.