The princely amount of Rs 1,000 to be paid to any Grandmaster willing to teach chess at recognised centres irked Shrikant Barve no end. But that was all that the All India Chess Federation (AICF) — then headed by a gentleman called N. Srinivasan — was willing to pay in 2008.

So Barve, a chess coach in Goa, vented his anger on a web page for chess enthusiasts. “Mr. Srinivasan, President of AICF, and Srinivasan, Treasurer of BCCI, are the same person...Chennai has picked up Dhoni for Rs 6 crore...and AICF president is offering Grand Master Rs.1,000/- for a day,” he wrote.

Within days, the Goa State Chess Association had expelled Barve from the association and blacklisted his chess centre. “The fear of the man was such they didn’t waste any time in expelling me,” Barve says.

You don’t mess with him even now. N. Srinivasan, 67, may have stepped aside temporarily as the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), but few are willing to speak about him openly.

“You don’t rub him the wrong way and then hope he will stay quiet,” says a former selector of the Tamil Nadu cricket team who remembers how another selector was dropped for opposing a player belonging to Srinivasan’s company, India Cements.

Srinivasan’s recent bout of trouble started with his son-in-law and Chennai Super Kings owner Gurunath Meiyappan’s arrest on charges of betting in the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket matches. But those who know him say he will bounce back stronger — the way he did 11 years after he was removed as the managing director of his company on charges of “irregularities”. He didn’t just return but now controls the Rs 4,000 crore-plus firm.

He could do that possibly because of his ability to stay calm even in a crisis. On the day Gurunath was rounded up, Srinivasan, who is also the president of the Tamil Nadu Golf Federation, was having breakfast at the picturesque Kodaikanal Golf Club with some friends (every summer he goes to his house there to escape the heat). “Though he must have come to know of it, he was absolutely normal,” a fellow golfer recalls.

Srinivasan entered the hurly-burly world of cricket politics in 2001 through his mentor A.C. Muthiah, former BCCI president. With Muthiah’s help he made it to the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association (TNCA).

He went up the ranks — from TNCA president to BCCI treasurer, honorary secretary, vice-president and finally president. He made — and dropped — friends along the way. He has, over time, fallen in and out with the bigwigs of BCCI and IPL — from Muthiah and Jagmohan Dalmiya to Lalit Modi.

A deeply religious man — he wears his religion on his forehead, literally — he is believed to be an admirer of astrologer K.Venkatesan, popularly known as Vaastu Venkatesan. The buzz is that from his car numbers to the travel plan of the Chennai Super Kings team, Venkatesan has a say in everything. Venkatesan has been gaining such popularity over the years that he now owns a large property in Chennai’s tony Poes Garden. Srinivasan lives in the Boat Club area — and has influential neighbours such as the politico-business Maran family.

His personal life has had its share of upheavals too. It’s said that when his daughter, Rupa, an avid golfer like her father, fell in love with Gurunath, who belonged to a different caste, Srinivasan was not happy. His gay son Ashwin is estranged from his father and lives in Mumbai. “My father is vehemently against homosexuality and has been asking me to change since 1998 when I came out to my parents,” Ashwin told DNA, the Mumbai-based daily, last year.

For Srinivasan, his son’s life would be a far cry from the days when he was growing up in Chennai. He studied chemical engineering from ACT Tech (where he funds a Rs 10 lakh annual memorial lecture), and at 23 joined India Cements, which his father T.S. Narayanaswami founded with K.S. Narayanan. Srinivasan joined the group in 1968, after the untimely death in 1968 of his father — who could, his partner said in his book Friendships and Flashback, “turn his hand at anything”.

After Srinivasan was forced to leave in 1979, he was out in the cold for 11 years. A Chennai-based financial consultant says he was reinstated with the assistance of officers in the Industrial Development Bank of India, which held shares in the company. Political analyst T.S.S. Mani stresses it helped that Srinivasan was a close friend of former Tamil Nadu chief minister K. Karunanidhi. (Srinivasan did not respond to The Telegraph’s request for comments.)

The company grew under Srinivasan. Narayanan’s son, N. Shankar, who also held a senior post in the company, sold his shares and moved out. So did Srinivasan’s brother N. Ramachandran, who is, incidentally, the vice-president of the Indian Triathlon Federation and president of the World Squash Federation. “Srinivasan’s business life has had its ups and downs but he played a big role in building up the company,” says a Chennai academic.

Srinivasan’s administrative abilities have been visible in the arena of games too. “He is a great administrator,” holds BCCI vice-president Niranjan Shah. “He is very meticulous and studies every matter minutely before taking a decision,” Shah adds.

His meticulousness was noticed when he sat with his legal team to draft a show cause notice sent to Lalit Modi, former IPL commissioner, before he was suspended from the BCCI in 2010. “He stitched all the loose ends. He also persuaded those in favour of Modi to refrain from openly supporting him,” a BCCI member points out.

There are examples galore of how he has often managed to have his own way. Take the case of IPL auctions. The BCCI constitution said: “No administrator shall have, directly or indirectly, any commercial interest in the matches and events conducted by the board.” This meant Srinivasan couldn’t own a team. But the board made an amendment to the constitution in September 2008. The new clause read: “No administrator shall have directly or indirectly any commercial interest in any of the events of the BCCI, excluding IPL, Champions League and Twenty20.”

His supporters in Chennai say that Srinivasan has been targeted unfairly in what is a fight between the North and South. TNCA secretary Kasi Vishwanathan lists all that Srinivasan has done for cricket — including renovating the Chidambaram stadium in Chennai and starting the TNCA cricket academy. Indian Cements, he adds, has been sponsoring cricket since 1965 and has some 40 cricketers on its payrolls. “Srinivasan is motivated by the love of games,” he says.

“He’s firm and clear in what he wants and if he sets his mind on something he goes for it,” says a seasoned Chennai person, holding that he has successfully promoted golf in the city and overhauled a city golf club annexe .

Few know what’s on Srinivasan’s mind right now. But many guess that like the terminator, he’ll be back.