Mumbai: There’s speculation that the Nominations Committee of the International Cricket Council (ICC), empowered to recommend who should succeed Percy Sonn as president in June 2008, may play it safe and forward the names of both candidates — India’s Sharad Pawar and England’s David Morgan — to the all-powerful Executive Board.

The Committee, headed by former Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) president Dr A.C. Muthiah, will place its recommendation before the Executive Board in Cape Town on Thursday.

Bob Merriman, Steve Camacho, John Blair, Mueen Afzal and Imran Khwaja are the other members of the Committee.

“Indications are that the Committee, which is probably split 3-3, is going to forward both names... Of course, nothing is confirmed, but that indeed is a very strong possibility,” a top source told The Telegraph on Tuesday.

The Executive Board, in turn, will forward its own recommendation to the annual conference (or the annual general meeting). For a candidate to be successful, he must secure 7 of the 10 Full Members’ votes.

Currently, Pawar is understood to have the support of four besides India — Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. South Africa and the West Indies are being strongly wooed.

Meanwhile, one learns former BCCI president Inderjit Singh Bindra and one of the current vice-presidents, Lalit Modi, are both in Cape Town to “lobby” for Pawar.