The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) president Shashank Manohar, on Saturday, dismissed Lalit Modi’s claims that board secretary and Chennai Super Kings (CSK) owner N. Srinivasan tried to influence the auction before the last edition of IPL in order to rope in England all-rounder Andrew Flintoff.

Infact Manohar launched a scathing attack on Modi terming him a “liar”.

“There are papers which prove that the charges levelled by Modi against Srinivasan are blatant lies,” Manohar said after the BCCI’s working committee meeting at the Wankhede stadium.

Ratnakar Shetty, the Chief Administrative Officer of BCCI, said that the members were shown the original video footage pertaining to the Flintoff’s bid.

“It started with a bid of $950,000 by Chennai Super Kings with the other team, Kings XI Punjab, taking it up to $1.3 million after which they didn’t have the money,” Shetty said.

“Then there was a bid of $1.4 million by Delhi Daredevils and $1.5 million by Rajasthan Royals, after which both exhausted their purse.” CSK eventually won Flintoff with a final bid of $1.55 million.

However, Shetty refused to respond to the allegation that CSK terminated their contract with Sri Lankan Chamara Kapugedara in violation of rules ahead of the auction so as to increase their kitty. The teams had a spending cap of $2 million for the auction.

“I don’t want to comment on that but all the records were seen by the members,” he said.

The other charge against Srinivasan was that he tried to influence the posting of umpires for CSK’s matches was also rebutted by Shetty.

“There is only one person who prepares the list of umpires and that is the Director of Umpires S. Venkataraghavan.

Technically, Srinivasan as the secretary can only forward that list to the IPL. There is nothing wrong in that procedure,” the CAO said.

Mehmood Abdi, counsel for Modi, took exception to Manohar’s choice of words.

“Very unfortunate to hear such an intemperate expression by the BCCI president, calling Modi a liar,” Abdi said.

“The Board issued a showcause notice to Modi only on the basis of an email by ECB chairman Giles Clarke. Now a trail of emails indicate some kind of irregularities in players’ auction.

Instead of refuting the existence of any such emails, it was expected of the board president to take cognizance of the matter and issue a showcause notice to Srinivasan,” he added.

Meanwhile, the upcoming AGM of the BCCI will be held on September 29 where Srinivasan will be declared as the next president-elect.

About the upcoming series against Australia at home, Shetty said that there would be no use of the Decision Review System (DRS).

“The BCCI’s views on DRS are already known. Cricket Australia didn’t ask for DRS to be used,” he said.