Jagmohan Dalmiya: Cricket administrator who played a crucial role in making India a financial power in the world game

A club cricketer, he joined his father's building firm and helped build it into one of India's largest

Dalmiya: he secured for India the World Cup, which had hitherto been confined to England (AP)

Jagmohan Dalmiya was a leading sports administrator credited with making India a major financial power in world cricket. He brought big money into Indian cricket in the 1990s, when as secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India he began selling television rights to private sports channels. He was also twice pivotal in taking the World Cup to India, in 1987 and 1996.

Born in Calcutta in 1940, he was a club cricketer, while joining his father's building firm and helping build it into one of India's largest. He joined the BCCI in 1979, becoming treasurer in 1983. He proposed applying to host the 1987 World Cup; there was opposition from England, where the first three tournaments had been held, but with support from cricket's smaller nations the vote was won.

Dalmiya was president of the International Cricket Council, the sport's world governing body, from 1997 to 2000, and of the BCCI from 2001 to 2004. In he was involved in a row with the ICC over the so-called "Denness Affair" in which the match referee and former England captain Mike Denness found the India captain Sachin Tendulkar guilty of a technical rules breach during a Test match against South Africa and fined him. Dalmiya demanded that Denness be replaced, and when India would not permit him to referee the final Test of the series, it was stripped of Test status by the ICC.

Dalmiya returned as caretaker head of the BCCI this year following spot-fixing allegations during the 2013 Indian Premier League, which had forced out his predecessor, Narainaswamy Srinivasan. He died following a heart attack.

Jagmohan Dalmiya, sports administrator: born Calcutta 30 May 1940; married (two children); died Kolkata 20 September 2015.