Cricket Australia deluged with complaints over team's behaviour

In the wake of Sunil Gavaskar's statement that sportsmanship has gone out of the modern game, James Sutherland, the Cricket Australia (CA) chief executive, today revealed that they were deluged with 15 days of complaints from the public, along with a backlash from sponsors, after Glenn McGrath's verbal tirade in the West Indies.

Speaking at a business lunch, Sutherland said that CA were inundated with phone calls and e-mails following McGrath's vein-popping rant at Ramnaresh Sarwan during the fourth Test in Antigua. McGrath later apologised to Sarwan and publicly expressed regret at his behaviour, but it has left significant ramifications for the game in Australia.

Sutherland continued: "The damage that that caused Australian cricket and arguably our brand could never be measured, but judging by the reaction we got from the media and the public there was no doubt there was a diminution as a result of that unfortunate incident.

"People were saying that the Australian team were poor role models and don't want (their) kids playing cricket and the captain needs to take control of the team."

Sutherland, who at the time demanded Steve Waugh curb in his team's behaviour, also said sponsors had contacted him to say their brands were suffering because of the backlash.

However, he insisted Cricket Australia had learned much from the incident. While not condoning McGrath's actions, he also believed that the Australian team had in some ways been a victim of their own success: "When you are successful in this day and age people do like to pick out the bad things and look for things that aren't that great."

No action was taken by either the umpires or match referee, Mike Procter, against McGrath over the incident, but he was rebuked by Sutherland, who believed it was up to the umpires to clamp down and enforce cricket's code of conduct to make sure such incidents were promptly dealt with.

Sutherland said: "What we need to see is the umpires having the strength of their convictions to act and report players when they cross that line. We need to clarify it and the umpires need to back it up and perhaps stop trying to be everyone's mate and actually take the hard line and nail players who cross the line."