Sunil Dev, manager of 2007 World T20-winning team, passes away

New Delhi: Former Delhi & Districts Cricket Association (DDCA) secretary Sunil Dev passed away on Wednesday after a prolonged illness. He was 75 and is survived by his wife and children. Dev, who was synonymous with DDCA from the late ’70s till 2015, also served in various BCCI sub-committees during his tenure as a sports administrator. However, Dev’s moment of glory came when he became the administrative manager of the Indian team that won the inaugural 2007 T20 World Cup in South Africa. He also served as an administrative manager on India’s tour of South Africa in 1996 and the 2014 tour of England. A born raconteur, Dev typified the good, bad and ugly of the DDCA. He could polarise opinions with his contrarian viewpoints on various policy issues in the DDCA, which earned him both friends and foes in equal measure. There was a time between 1990 till the first decade of the new millennium when no Ranji Trophy or age-group team could be released without his seal of approval. In fact, renowned journalist James Astill, who is the Asia Editor of ‘Economist’, in his critically acclaimed book “The Great Tamasha”, had mentioned his meeting with Dev and how his explanation and theatrics around ticket sales of a particular game at the Kotla amused him. There were many stories about the style of working of Dev but a few became urban myths with the passage of time. If he was in a relaxed mood in the company of scribes, he would narrate stories about how a 17-year-old named Virat Kohli learnt driving on his SUV.