Fans hurl racial abuse at Monty, ECB rules out lodging complaint

Sydney, Nov 14 (UNI) Despite stricter ICC laws and repeated warnings from Cricket Australia, fans hurled racial taunts at Monty Panesar during England's warm-up match against New South Wales here.

Monty -- along with South African-born Kevin Pietersen -- was subjected to racial abuse during the warm-up match before the Ashes.

The 'Daily Telegraph' claims it overheard a fan calling Monty a ''Stupid Indian'' when the left-arm spinner was fielding at the boundary.

''Give us a wave Monty. You can't speak English you stupid Indian. I'll have to say it in Indian. What are you doing playing in the English side? You're not English,'' the newspaper quoted the fan as saying.

England's team spokesman confirmed the incident and called on the spectators to behave.

''We have come out here to play the game with dignity. And we expect the Australian fans will show the sportsmanship they are renowned for and hope they will respect the players both on and off the field,'' he said.

The England spokesman, however, ruled out lodging a formal complaint for now and said the team management was closely following the fan behaviour.

''We will continue to monitor the situation, but we're not going to make an official complaint at this stage,'' he told BBC sport.

Reacting to the incident, Cricket Australia spokesman Peter Young said the English have been a bit late in reporting the incident to CA, He, however, asked the spectators to be restrained and refrain from making racial taunts.

''Australian crowds always give English players plenty of banter and that's fine as long as it doesn't step over the appropriate boundaries.'' ''We spoke to the ECB management on Monday and we've been working very closely with them. But we didn't have anyone there and by the time it was reported to us it was 24 hours cold,'' he added.

The CA spokesman called on the fans to report any racist behaviour to the ground staff at the earliest.

''Anyone who hears a comment like that would be helping us if they immediately reported it to the ground authorities. We have put the public on notice that the monitoring of crowd behaviour is going to be significantly upgraded this year,'' he said.

''If one person out of 100,000 shouts out an abusive comment it can be difficult to pick them up, so we do need help,'' he added.

Earlier, Monty and Pietersen were reportedly abused during the first practice match at Canberra as well and the Australian Federal Police has confirmed that eight spectators were ejected for hurling abuses during the match.

Meanwhile, officials at the Sydney Cricket Ground said they have not been told about any racial incident so far and fans have been ejected from the ground only for being ''intoxicated''.

The Aussie fans came in for severe criticism after hurling racial taunts at the South Africans when they were here for a series earlier this year. The Proteas lodged a formal complaint with the ICC, leading to an inquiry, which found their allegations to be true.

The ICC then made it's anti-racism laws stricter and CA joined in by warning the spectators of ejection from the grounds for racist behaviour during the Ashes. However, despite the warnings and the preparations, several former cricketers and current South African skipper Graeme Smith had warned Monty of racist taunts from the crowds.

UNI XC PM SI GC1024