“The president personally intervened and softened the board’s stance. Therefore, I feel that I should go to Bangalore and first chair the selection meeting to pick the team for Australia. I will speak to the president once again and request him for a meeting where my demands are taken into consideration,” Vengsarkar said.

For now, the five selectors, including Vengsarkar, will assemble in Bangalore to name the 16-member Test squad for Australia and the team for the third Test.

The main issue remains unresolved, though. Pawar has promised that the compensation question will be taken up at the Board’s working committee meeting in Mumbai on December 16, leaving no room for Vengsarkar to re-negotiate. It was victory for Pawar in the balancing act.

Vengsarkar later said that he has had a talk with Pawar and that the BCCI chief has agreed to meet him a tomorrow or the day after.

The issue took a bit of doing on both sides. “I have been exchanging SMSs with him (Vengsarkar) and we will have to see if he is there (at the meeting) tomorrow,” Pawar had said to mediapersons in New Delhi earlier in the day. That was when Pawar presented a changed posture of the Board, and it seemed that he was in a conciliatory mood. “Rupees 40 lakh is a big amount, and we have to see if we can compensate some of it,” said Pawar, adding that the demands made by the chief selector were “legitimate”.

Pawar, however, shifted the onus of the settling of demands issue to the working committee of the Board, saying it was the right forum for such a discussion and that it was the right body to take such a decision. “Rajiv Shukla and I are here, but we cannot take this decision. It has to go to the working committee,” Pawar had said.

Pawar, however, did not once indicate that the Board could back down on its strict guidelines and gag orders on selectors and officials—certain sections of which Vengsarkar has vehemently objected to. On the issue of Ravi Shastri and Sunil Gavaskar’s columns, Pawar said: “They are with the NCA and the coaches selection committee and do not fall within the ambit of the Code.”

Another important issue plaguing Vengsarkar at the moment is that he is irked with the way certain board officials — “who haven’t even played the game at any decent level” — are telling him how to conduct himself. “Who are they to tell me whether I should be entering the dressing room or not,” he asks.