New Delhi: Indian captain Virat Kohli on Sunday stood beside his team and slammed reported incidents of racial abuse during the ongoing third Test between Australia and India at the Sydney Cricket Ground, calling it peak of rowdy behaviour and absolutely unacceptable.
Kohli, who is back in India on paternity leave, took to Twitter to address the incident.
“Racial abuse is absolutely unacceptable. Having gone through many incidents of really pathetic things said on the boundary Iines, this is the absolute peak of rowdy behaviour. It’s sad to see this happen on the field,” Kohli said in his tweet.
“The incident needs to be looked at with absolute urgency and seriousness and strict action against the offenders should set things straight for once,” he wrote in another tweet.
While there was investigation underway about the racial abuse complaints raised by the Indian team on the third day, crowd trouble extended into the fourth day of the third Test as well.
Play was halted for a few minutes after India pacer Mohammed Siraj complained of abuse from a section of the crowd at the SCG. Six spectators were evicted from the stands by the authorities after the on-field umpires and the security officials combined to take action, and with CA launching an investigation parallel to the one by the police.
Meanwhile, India’s premier spinner Ravichandran Ashwin also reiterated that this was not the first time the Indian players have faced racism in Sydney and urged the authorities to deal it with an ‘iron-fist’.
“This is my fourth tour to Australia and Sydney especially here we’ve had a few experiences [racial abuse] even in the past. I think one or two times, even players have reacted and gotten into trouble in the past and that’s not because of the player, it is actually because of the way the crowd has been speaking. Especially the people on the lower tier of the stands, they have been quite nasty and been quite abusive as well,” Ashwin said.
“But this is one time they’ve gone one step ahead and used racial abuses. It’s definitely not acceptable in this day and age, we’ve seen a lot, we’ve evolved as a society. And sometimes I think this roots back to the upbringing and the way one sees. This must be definitely dealt with an iron fist and we must make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he added. (UNI)