India tour will go ahead as scheduled

Australia's Test squad will leave for India on Sunday as scheduled after Cricket Australia confirmed on Tuesday the tour would go ahead, despite increased fears over security following a series of bomb blasts in New Delhi on Saturday. The Australian board carried out a review following the terrorist attacks, receiving input from the Australian government's department of foreign affairs as well as conducting their own independent assessment.

"We have done a review of our security advice and it has not changed since last week," Cricket Australia's public affairs manager Peter Young said. "The safety and security advice for India is, broadly speaking, to exercise caution."

Young said the security will be upgraded for the team as well as for the A side, which is currently touring in India. Australia A's players have also been told not to leave the hotel without good reason.

Cricket Australia's decision to go ahead with the tour had been criticised by the Pakistan board, but Young said the situation was different. Australia were one of five teams to express concerns over visiting Pakistan for this month's Champions Trophy, which was subsequently postponed, and had deferred their visit to the country for Test and one-day series earlier in the year.

"In very broad terms the advice we have is in sharp contrast to what we had for Pakistan, which was that it was not safe to travel [in Pakistan] because the attacks there were targeting westerners," Young said. "The problems [in India] are completely different in intensity and of a different nature."

Australia will play the third of four Tests in Delhi, where more than 20 people were killed on Saturday. The tour begins with warm-up games scheduled in Jaipur and Hyderabad, where bombs have gone off over the past year. The team then heads to Bangalore, where one person was killed in attacks in July, for the opening Test on October 9.