MCA elections: If Tendulkar can retire, why not Pawar, asks Uddhav Thackeray

With just a day to go for the Mumbai Cricket Association elections, things are heating up. This time, Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray has lashed out at MCA president Sharad Pawar for contesting the polls. As reported by DNA, Uddhav took a dig at Pawar for carrying on and on and not hanging up his boots citing that even legends like Sachn Tendulkar and Sunil Gavaskar have called it a day but there is still one man who doesn’t want to retire despite failures. [caption id=“attachment_2297464” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File picture of Sharad Pawar. AFP[/caption] “Politics and cricket should be kept separate. That is the advice given to us. The politicians themselves are making a mockery of the game,” Uddhav said in his address to MCA voters in the Cricket First meeting. “Sachin and Gavaskar retired, but this man, who is the president of the Mumbai Cricket Association has not retired. If you look at the score, he has scored nothing but 0,” he added. Thackeray’s Shiv Sena will be backing Cricket First group’s Vijay Patil who will be taking on Pawar for the post of MCA president. Patil’s group has fielded two Shiv Sena leaders - Pratap Sarnaik and Rahul Shewale, for posts of vice president and member of management committee respectively. The war of words had already started when Pawar brought up the DY Patil Stadium vs Wankhede issue where he was quoted as saying that he wouldn’t have been contesting the elections had Patil agreed to play international matches and IPL games at the Wankhede instead of DY Patil. “We can’t encourage talks about giving IPL matches from which the MCA gets a few lakh rupees per match. If the match is given elsewhere [other than Wankhede and CCI] then MCA will suffer financial loss,” the former BCCI and ICC chief was quoted as saying in an Indian Express report. “If this condition would have been accepted, probably I would not have contested also,” Pawar had added. Patil had hit back at Pawar saying DY Patil stadium was an insurance to Wankhede and he did not intend to get financial benefits from it. Vijay Patil also spoke in detail to Firspost about the various issues that are on his agenda if elected as the President. Read the excerpts here .