FICA chief to discuss racism issue with Australian board

Niranjan Shah, the BCCI secretary, believes the issue involving Andrew Symonds will turn out to be a misunderstanding © AFP

Tim May, the chief executive of the Federation of International Cricketers' Associations (FICA), will discuss Andrew Symonds' complaint about the racial taunts by the crowd in Vadodara with James Sutherland, Cricket Australia's chief executive. "I will be quizzing James as to what happened and the positions Cricket Australia and the ICC are taking," May told the Herald Sun.

Symonds said he was disappointed by the local authorities' denial that any monkey chants had been directed at him, but according to Peter Young, CA's public affairs and anti-racism officer, Symonds decided to move on from the issue. "Andrew's observations to James were that it was best to just ignore these things and move on," Young said.

Niranjan Shah, the BCCI secretary, was confident it would eventually turn out that the whole issue was a misunderstanding. "Nobody has pinpointed anything," Shah said. "He [Symonds] shouldn't be disappointed. The truth is the truth. What can you do?"

There have been rumours that relations between CA and the BCCI had soured following the incident. But Young discounted them. "I am not aware that we have spoken to the Indian board at this stage," he said. "The Indian board and Cricket Australia and the other eight nations all voted for and supported this policy when it came to the ICC table."

Young also said it was difficult to control crowd racism and added that CA itself had a problem when South African players complained of being abused by spectators in Afrikaans during their tour of Australia two years ago. "It can undeniably be difficult with spectator comment," Young told Fox Sports. "Most of the time you don't get to hear it. When South Africa were here two summers ago no one from CA or any of the state associations ever heard the comments and it made it very hard to locate the alleged offenders and then take action.

"All we could do was go through the policy and reinforce all those things that we were able to reinforce the training of venue staff, ensure the communication to spectators was clear and the like." Last year the ICC adopted the amended anti-racism code which includes penalties like imposing life bans on spectators found guilty of racial abuse and revoking the international status of the venue where the incident took place.