On the face of it, this may sound contrived. But fact is, to understand cricket and the skulduggery that now beleaguers the sport all of us Indians love so hopelessly, you ought to understand a bit of how the cement business operates in this country. This, for one simple reason: N Srinivasan " president of the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI), head of the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association, and owner of Chennai Super Kings (CSK) at the Indian Premier League (IPL) " is also managing director of India Cements.
And it is at India Cements, a company his father founded in 1946, that Srinivasan earned his spurs. He once told a colleague of ours a couple of years ago: "I don't go looking for fights. Fights come looking for me." And the man knows to fight hard!
Now cement is what people describe as "smokestack" businesses " a polite way of saying old-world businesses where no corners are given, folks keep their head down, talk little and simply fight tooth and nail for every little penny. It's a world Srinivasan is intimately familiar with.
For instance, there was this time when Ambuja Cements was a big name in the business....
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10:44 AM, Mar 09, 2012
