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Fans booked for racial taunts

Four, including a woman, were evicted from the Wankhede

MUMBAI: Four Indian cricket fans will face legal action for allegedly ‘racially’ taunting Australian cricketer Andrew Symonds by making monkey gestures, a police official said on Thursday.

The four spectators were evicted from the Wankhede Stadium, the venue of the seventh One-Day International match in Mumbai, on Wednesday after cricket officials showed the police photographs of them making the gestures as Symonds came in to bat, police officer Sunil Zende said.

The fans, which included one woman, were charged with harassment and misbehaviour and released after paying Rs. 1,200 bail. They will have to appear in court later to face charges, Mr. Zende said.

Media criticism

Meanwhile, Australian newspapers said on Thursday that Symonds continued to suffer racist abuse from Indian spectators, publishing a photograph they said proved the allegation.

Symonds, the only black player in the Australian team, has complained he was subjected to chants like the sound of a monkey grunting, during the ODI in Vadodara.

He was also booed by some of the 40,000-strong crowd in Mumbai on Wednesday, prompting Cricket Australia to make a report to Match Referee Chris Broad.

Melbourne’s Herald-Sun newspaper and the Sydney Morning Herald published a photograph of the Mumbai crowd which appeared to show some spectators making monkey gestures with their arms.

The Herald said the photograph was the first evidence backing Symonds’s earlier claims, calling for the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to take the issue seriously.

“A racist threat has weaved its way through the latter stages of this series and any further attempts by the BCCI to bury its head in the sand will presumably be met with scorn by the International Cricket Council,” it said.

Dismisses suggestion

The Australian newspaper dismissed a suggestion from the Vadodara police chief that the crowds were actually praying to Hanuman, rather than seeking to racially abuse Symonds.

“Indian denials of the racist incident contain a number of lines of thought ranging from ridiculous to ignorant,” the newspaper said, adding that the Hanuman suggestions “take the banana.”

The Indian and Australian cricket boards on Wednesday issued a joint statement strongly condemning racism of any kind in the game.

It said witnesses to poor crowd behaviour must draw the attention of the authorities immediately so that it can be addressed there and then, rather than being reviewed via media reports.

The ICC has demanded an explanation from the BCCI over the Vadodara incident.

Pawarspeak

BCCI President Sharad Pawar believes Symonds mistook hostile crowd antics for racism and insisted that the episode would not sour BCCI’s relations with its Australian counterpart.

Reacting to reports that Symonds had been subjected to monkey chants in Vadodara, Nagpur and in Mumbai, Pawar assured that ICC’s Anti-Racism Code would be strictly adhered to but he also felt that it was not a case of racism.

“We respect that we have to protect the individual player. There is a complaint and we will take appropriate action,” Pawar was quoted as saying by the Sydney Morning Herald.

“I believe this is a misunderstanding; a language issue. There are many languages spoken in India, and I don’t understand many of them myself.

“Still, it is the responsibility of the Indian board to execute the ICC code. Steps have already been taken,” he added.

Australian skipper Ricky Ponting said continuous “racial abuse” directed towards Symonds by a section of the Indian crowd must have left even the host fans embarrassed.

“I’m sure there will be a lot of embarrassed people around this country as well to know that this stuff has happened again at one of their cricket venues,” Ponting said in Mumbai after the final match.

Ponting said he was hoping for better crowd behaviour during the Twenty20 match on Saturday.

“It is done now, hopefully in the Twenty20 match on Saturday it will not happen,” he said. — Agencies

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