Blinking was the last thing Jagmohan Dalmiya would do when he stood behind the stumps. So focussed was the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) president on the approaching ball and the batsman in front of him that he’d stare without batting an eyelid, a friend says of the man who was once a wicket keeper for a city club.

It’s a habit that has clearly stayed with him through the ups and downs of his life. Dalmiya was unblinking ? and undeterred ? when Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee publicly called for his ouster as the CAB boss more than a month ago and voiced his support for Calcutta police commissioner Prasun Mukherjee, the challenger. All he did, in response, was file his re-nomination for the top post in one of the oldest and most venerable cricket associations in the country.

Call Dalmiya anything you want ? haughty, arrogant or manipulative ? but you can’t deny that the man has unflagging tenacity stashed in his wiry frame which is often draped in a safari suit. In fact, it was this trait that had lifted this non-smoking vegetarian from Jorabagan, a north Calcutta neighbourhood where he grew up, on to the high table, from where he is now being dragged down, slowly but unmistakably.

In 1977, Dalmiya ? Jaguda to his followers? joined CAB as a representative of the city-based Rajasthan Club. He was part of a team hand-picked by former CAB president Biswanath Dutta, who made him treasurer. From then on, it was a journey up for Dalmiya, who, having established himself as a master negotiator, went on to become the president of CAB, the International Cricket Council and then the Board for Control of Cricket in India.

But, as the scientist said, what goes up must come down. After years of presiding over national and international cricket, Dalmiya’s luck ran out last November when Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar wrested control of the BCCI. Ever since, it has been one long downhill ride for him, as Pawar’s BCCI fired a number of charges at him, including embezzlement of cricket funds (Dalmiya has denied these accusations). The body blow, however, came from the Bengal chief minister who called for a leadership change in CAB, controlled by Dalmiya and his men for more than two decades.

For Dalmiya ? who, in the words of an aide, “lives and breathes” cricket ? the attack on his home turf could not have come at a worse time. But he refuses to give in. After all, this is not the first time that he is taking on the high and mighty. He had a face off with former Union information and broadcasting minister K.P. Singh Deo over telecast rights in the early 1990s and later with the late Madhav Rao Scindia.

But it’s not easy to take on the head of a government ruling Bengal for three decades. Instructions were sent to the district sports associations headed by the district magistrates to back Mukherjee, taking on Dalmiya in the CAB poll slated for Sunday. The universities ? which, too, are members of the CAB and have voting rights ? were asked to pitch in as well. Things became more difficult for Dalmiya when former Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly, once close to him, openly sided with Mukherjee and his team of contestants, including Snehasis Ganguly, his brother. In fact, Sourav, in an emailed bombshell, blamed Dalmiya obliquely for being dropped from the Indian team. His aides hold that it troubled Dalmiya ? but he still refused to quit the race.

No one knows for sure what prompted Bhattacharjee to get involved in the CAB election. Government sources say that Dalmiya, who runs a construction business, embarrassed the government by failing to construct a special economic zone for the leather industry despite repeated deadline extensions. “But if the chief minister was angry about that he should have cancelled the contract rather than trying to punish him this way,” a CAB official says.

Not surprisingly, CAB office bearers are angry at the “treatment meted out” to Dalmiya, now in his sixties. “This is not the way you treat somebody who has done so much not just for Bengal but Indian cricket,” says Gautam Dasgupta, a member of the CAB’s board of trustees.

But then, there is no dearth either of critics of Dalmiya’s style of functioning ? often described as “opaque and autocratic”. Says former test cricketer Gopal Bose, “Apart from politicking, the present regime has done precious little for either the association or cricket.”

But Dalmiya hangs in tough. If anything, he is putting to use the contacts he has cultivated over the years, the result of, a Dalmiya confidant says, his relentless networking. Which is why nobody was really surprised when transport minister Subhas Chakraborty, PWD minister Kshiti Goswami and initially even former chief minister Jyoti Basu criticised the police commissioner’s candidacy.

But to defeat the Scottish Church old boy who studied science, Mukherjee needs at least 60 votes. It seems daunting even though the police commissioner is believed to be fast bridging the gap. Meanwhile, the tenacious Dalmiya pushes on, working the phone.

He clearly doesn’t want to blink, not on Sunday.