CA urges ICC to adopt AFL code on racial abuse

Sydney, Jul 10 (UNI) Cricket Australia (CA) has urged the ICC to adopt an Australian Football League (AFL) style code in order to prevent the kind of ugly controversies which cropped up during the ill-tempered home series against India earlier this year.

The proposal was debated at the International Cricket Council's (ICC) annual meeting in Dubai last week, where the CA argued that the existing process to tackle racial abuse failed during the India-Australia series.

CA operations manager Michael Brown revisited the AFL's racial and religious vilification code to draw up the proposal.

''We think this is important, and we're continuing to argue the case,'' Cricket Australia's (CA) anti-racism officer and public affairs manager Peter Young was quoted as saying by The Age. ''It is consistent with our view, and the ICC's view, that cricket should have a zero tolerance approach to racism in sport.'' ''We need to understand what we need to do to encourage cultural acceptance, and that it's more complicated than simply writing a list of rules. We recommended that there should be an intermediate step that recognises the complexity and the need for a more sophisticated process, that takes the high drama out of it,'' he added. ''Genuine, properly-structured, well-founded mediation can have really good results. You can achieve reconciliation and move on.'' UNI XC AB RKM GC1836