While expressing satisfactions over the security arrangements for the Australian team in Sri Lanka, Cricket Australia(CA) Chief spokesman Peter Young said the CA was not aware of any reason why the Australian government would advise it not to proceed with its tour.
Certain elements of Western media have been advocating for a boycott of the Lankan tour after the local ABC network aired the controversial Channel 4 documentary ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’ in its Four Corners programme.
“Obviously, we’re aware of the tragic circumstances that that country’s been going through for several decades with their terrible civil war. My understanding is they’ve reached a point where that civil war is no longer active,” Young said. “We’re not judges of the rights and wrongs of both sides during that conflict.”
Meanwhile the Australian Cricketers’ Association chief executive Paul Marsh confirmed he had been contacted by some players — admittedly none likely to be part of either the limited-over or Test squads — who were upset by the apparent conduct of the Sri Lankan government, based on what they saw in the documentary.
“The process here, as it always is, is that we talk to the government about it. The Four Corners program probably raised some issues that we weren’t necessarily aware of, and as we’ve done in Zimbabwe in the past . . . with these type of moral issues, we do take direction from the government,” Marsh said yesterday. “The government didn’t allow us to go there [Zimbabwe] on our last [scheduled] tour. If the government doesn’t give us that directive then our position has always been that we will proceed unless it’s unsafe.”
-Adaderana-