Chennai, Oct. 10: Some of the southern salvos at the BCCI are being launched from a two-bedroom office-cum-residence of one T.A. Murali, who serves as the secretary of the Netaji Cricket Club.

The Netaji club and an equally small Bharathi Cricket Club here have filed a slew of cases against the Board of Control for Cricket in India, leading to Madras High Court appointing Justice S. Mohan ?as interim administrator? of the board.

The court has restrained a new team of administrators from running the board and stalled outgoing president Jagmohan Dalmiya?s installation as patron-in-chief. Ranbir Singh Mahendra was elected president on September 29 with Dalmiya?s casting vote.

As the high stakes battle hots up, the spotlight has swivelled on the two clubs. A former Tamil Nadu Cricket Association official, who does not want to be named, said they are not first division league clubs in Chennai. They are actively involved in lower level league matches, but are not known to have produced any cricketer of repute.

Murali, the secretary of the Netaji Cricket Club, is an employee of Henkel-Spic, a company that belongs to the group headed by A.C. Muthiah. Muthiah?s M.A. Chidambaram industrial group has helped build the stadium in Chennai, where Australia will meet India in the second Test of the ongoing series.

Asked if both clubs enjoy Muthiah?s patronage, a spokesperson for the group declined to comment.

Muthiah was not available for comment as he is abroad. He is expected back on Monday. He is a former president of the BCCI and lost to Dalmiya in the 2003 election.

Another source pointed out that the two clubs have little resources of their own and just pay their annual subscription fees to the state association. Yet, a top-level lawyer, Nalini Chidambaram, wife of finance minister P. Chidambaram, is arguing the Netaji club?s case.

Justice Mohan, who was greeted by locked doors at the BCCI office in Mumbai yesterday, is likely to report to the high court tomorrow how its order has not been honoured by the board. It could invite contempt proceedings against Dalmiya and his team.

The ?interim administrator? of the board had been an active cricketer in his youth, playing for the Triplicane Cricket Club in Chennai.

The former Supreme Court judge is also a poet and was elected the first Indian president of the World Congress of Poets, a non-profit organisation based in the US, this May. Though an occasional writer, his poems caught the eye of the congress and he was invited to deliver the keynote address at its San Francisco gathering in 1981.

He served as the chief justice of the Madras and Karnataka high courts before moving to the Supreme Court in 1991.

In 1995, he was part of the three-member bench that delivered a landmark judgment, directing the Centre to ?create an independent regulatory body for the airwaves and end the state monopoly on broadcasting and satellite uplinks?.