Srinivasan hands over World Cup trophy to Australia

Melbourne, March 29 (IANS) Former BCCI president and current ICC chairman N. Srinivasan handed over the cricket World Cup trophy to captain Michael Clarke on Sunday after Australia defeated New Zealand in a one-sided final by seven wickets at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Srinivasan did the trophy honours in a departure from the International Cricket Council's (ICC) rules which empower the president to hand over the trophy to the winning captain.

According to reports, Srinivasan went ahead with the presentation ceremony apparently unhappy with president Mustafa Kamal's outrage against controversial umpiring decisions following India's quarter-final victory against Bangladesh.

Kamal, who hails from Bangladesh, accused the umpires of favouritism, saying it could have been a deliberate attempt to throw out his country from the quadrennial event.

"It could be deliberate. Though I can't say it absolutely but it looks like that. I know in cricket, human errors are quite possible, but how can a dozen decisions go against Bangladesh? It was very, very poor umpiring," Kamal said after Bangladesh's loss.

But both the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the ICC chief executive David Richardson rubbished the accusations.

Srinivasan took over as the chairman of the ICC in 2014.

In previous editions of the World Cup, the ICC president has always handed the trophy to the winning captain. In 2011, it was then president Sharad Pawar who presented the trophy to the victorious Indian team's captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni.