India v Australia, 7th ODI, Mumbai

Monkey-chants controversy in Mumbai too

Nagraj Gollapudi in Mumbai

October 17, 2007

The controversy over abusive crowd behaviour continued in the final ODI © Getty Images

The topic of Andrew Symonds being subjected to racial abuse was once again at the forefront in the final one-day international of the series at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. An Australian photographer captured on camera certain spectators in the North Stand enacting monkey chants, a complaint that had been first made during the fifth one-dayer at Vadodara last week.

The matter was brought to the notice of Chris Broad, the ICC match referee, by the Australian team management, and Broad later confirmed to Cricinfo that action had been taken against the miscreants. "I saw the photograph and have sent an official report to the ICC," he said.

Ricky Ponting, the Australian captain, said the team was disappointed that the same behaviour had been repeated at various grounds. "Andrew is hurt at the crowd behaviour but we've been told action has been taken," he said. "But some of the stuff that happens is totally unacceptable and leaves a bad taste in everyone's mouth. I'm sure there are a lot of people in India that would be embarrassed by the incident. "It is done now, hopefully in the Twenty20 match on Saturday it does not happen there."

The deputy commissioner of police Brijesh Singh confirmed there had been some misbehaviour: "We have booked the four under Sec 110 [behaving indecently in public] of Bombay Police Act for misbehaviour," he told PTI. However, he didn't elaborate on the exact nature of misconduct, and didn't specify if any racial comments had been made by the crowd.

The incident happened just hours after Sharad Pawar and Creagh O'Connor, the respective presidents of the BCCI and Cricket Australia, issued a joint statement saying there was no place for racism in cricket. Symonds lasted just one ball in the match, falling to Murali Kartik, but was booed vociferously both during his walks to and from the pitch.

Nagraj Gollapudi is an assistant editor at Cricinfo

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