If you were living in a remote Andean outpost between 2005 and the summer of 2010, it is perfectly plausible that you would have been oblivious of Lalit Kumar Modi's existence.
If you were in a cricket-playing country though, it was hard to avoid his sharp suits, bombastic statements and smug expressions. In that half-decade, he was as much the face of Indian cricket as Sachin Tendulkar. Relatively unknown before he became the Board of Control for Cricket in India's (BCCI) youngest vice-president, Modi quickly became its driving force. Having signed one lucrative deal after another for an already rich organisation, he then gave shape to the cricket-league dream that had been thwarted in the 1990s.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) - cynics will say that it was nothing more than a souped-up version of the rival Indian Cricket League - was such a tremendous success in its first season that Modi even got his own television commercial, for a telecom service provider.
His finest hour came the following year, when the Indian government said that it could not guarantee security for the IPL's second season. Undaunted by the last-minute hitch, Modi took the entire show to South Africa, fitting the games into five weeks instead of six and attracting hundreds of thousands of local fans.
A few months later, he was once again a ubiquitous presence as cricket's first-ever Champions League was played in India. Despite a lukewarm response, both at the stadiums and from the TV audience, Modi confidently asserted that the competition would one day rival football's premier club event, the Uefa Champions League, and rugby union's Super 14.
Then, last April, with a series of spontaneous tweets about the new IPL franchise from Kochi, Modi's life took a rapid turn for the worse. If it was Stalingrad that marked the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany, it was a series of indiscreet remarks about the shareholding patterns of the Kochi franchise and Sunanda Pushkar, now the wife of Shashi Tharoor, a former minister, that sealed Modi's fate.
Within weeks, he had been suspended from the IPL, and the BCCI's Annual General Meeting closed the door on any fading hopes of a return to the corridors of cricket power. There was more than a hint of vicarious delight in the statement released by Shashank Manohar, the board president, after the meeting. "Modi is not part of the BCCI any more," he said. "Now he cannot say that he is the suspended IPL chairman."
It didn't end there. There were further allegations of financial misconduct leaked to the media, dodgy deals with dubious firms and a bizarre claim that he had misappropriated 24 Bandelier watches. Manohar also tried to claim that all the BCCI's ills began and ended with Modi, as though other officials are epitomes of probity.
"You can't say that all persons are like Modi and that allegations may come up against the new chairman," he said. "Basically, organisations function on the honesty of the people, and organisations also function on faith; so you may have any system in place, but if any person is dishonest the procedures and systems won't work."
It is debatable whether any other BCCI functionary would have had the vision or the dynamism to get the IPL off the ground and flying high so quickly. With his autocratic style and tremendous energy - even if you emailed or messaged him at 2am, there was a chance you would get a reply within five minutes - Modi made things happen, riding roughshod over those who presented obstacles.
That strength was also his greatest weakness. He lacked grace and could be churlish, and How to Win Friends and Influence People had clearly not been on his reading list. He also allowed friends and family to partake of the substantial IPL pie. Links to the Jaipur, Mohali and Kolkata franchises were never denied and the first two now face suspension if they can't get their affairs in order before November's IPL auction.
With a slew of allegations against him, Modi is currently lying low overseas, having been seen holidaying in Italy and various other places. His lawyers are firefighting on multiple fronts, and it is unlikely that the BCCI will back away from filing criminal charges. But with the board currently scrutinising the ownership of the Kochi franchise, he could not resist a little self-justification. "Kochi franchise - just as I predicted," he tweeted recently. "I had for(e)seen this. Uncanny - it is happening now. And this started all the show causes. Show cause should be issued to people who forced this agreement to be signed in the first place."
Indian cricket and the IPL have moved a fair distance since those tumultuous April days, and his words no longer have a captive audience. Even those that once supported him have been sidelined by the new dispensation. "I have never believed that anyone can be marginalised for ever," Inderjit Singh Bindra, the strongman of Punjab cricket said on the eve of the Mohali Test. "Everyone is bound to make a comeback."
Bindra remains a special advisor to the International Cricket Council, but his influence in Indian cricket has waned with Modi's removal. Nero allegedly fiddled while Rome burned. Modi didn't do anything that drastic. But the chances are that not a day goes by that he doesn't regret those few words he keyed into his Blackberry.
Dileep Premachandran is an associate editor at Cricinfo
