Racist abuse from Australian fans to South Africa’s cricketers was ”premeditated, coordinated and calculated to get under the players’ skins”, said an official report to the International Cricket Council (ICC) on Tuesday.
South African fast bowler Andre Nel said he was racially taunted by fans in the third Test in Sydney in January. In the first test in Perth in December, South Africa’s Makhaya Ntini, Ashwell Prince, Garnett Kruger and Shaun Pollock said they were taunted in Afrikaans.
The ICC commissioned Indian solicitor general Goolam Vahanvati to investigate and he concluded that there is a ”grave problem in Australia relating to crowd behavior, particularly drunken spectators”.
But Vahanvati’s report said that drunken fans weren’t solely to blame.
”It would be wrong to attribute the racial abuse only to South African expatriates or explain it away as being the result of drunken behavior,” the report said.
”It was premeditated, coordinated and calculated to get under the players’ skins.”
The ICC at its board meeting appointed a three-man committee to provide recommendations at the next ICC meeting on April 30 on how to deal with racist abuse.
This committee will comprise ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed, Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland and United Cricket Board of South Africa chief executive Gerald Majola. – Sapa-AP