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CA satisfied with BCCI's handling of racism issue

October 19, 2007 16:15 IST

Pleased with the way BCCI reacted to the issue of racial abuse of Andrew Symonds, Cricket Australia Chief Executive James Sutherland has said there is no question of boycotting future tours of India.

Symonds and his teammates, along with the Australian media, claimed the all-rounder had been subjected to racial abuse during the last three matches of the just-concluded ODI series and they were critical of the BCCI for its reluctance to acknowledge the incident.

BCCI president Sharad Pawar later issued a joint statement along with his CA counterpart Creagh O'Connor and Sutherland seemed satisfied with that.

"I don't think it has got to that stage or even gets to that stage (of boycotting)," Sutherland was quoted as saying by The Sporting Life in London.

"There is an ICC anti-racism policy in place. The ICC and the BCCI, the host of these matches, will no doubt deal with these issues going forward.

"It is really pleasing to see overnight the announcements by the Indian board president to condemn racism in cricket," he said.

The top CA official was upset that after Vadodara and Nagpur, Symonds was subjected to monkey chants in Mumbai as well, but patted the BCCI for taking action against the offenders.

"Whilst the incident in the last game in Mumbai was disappointing, it is pleasing to see the officials at the ground are taking the response to evict those people from the ground and take the appropriate action," the official said.

BCCI has already entrusted Chief Administrative Officer Ratnakar Shetty to look after crowd behaviour in Saturday's Twenty20 match against Australia and police personnel will be deployed to prevent a repeat of the episode.

Sutherland revealed speaking to Symonds on the matter and he also had a word of praise for the all-rounder.

"I spoke to him a few days ago since the previous incident and Andrew is remarkable in the way that he is dealing with this matter," Sutherland said.

"His view on it is that it is a matter that he really wants to move on from. It is not something that he is necessarily comfortable with but he sees that there is no cause for reaction because that only further inflames it."

The seven-match series was marked and marred by on-field aggression and things off the ground but Sutherland was happy that Ricky Ponting's men played well enough to win the series 4-2.

"I think the Australian cricket team has played great cricket, perhaps these incidents have caused cricket to be in the spotlight a little bit more but the team has played fantastically well and I think to win the series as well as they have is an absolute credit to them," he said.

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