Behave better, ICC tells India and Australia

Sydney, February 25: India and Australia have been warned to improve their on-field behaviour after Ishant Sharma was fined over an ugly incident with Andrew Symonds.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) again called on both sides to bury their differences and focus on playing the game amid fears of another bitter fallout between the feuding teams.


"Clearly both teams are still sensitive to each others' actions in the middle," ICC match referee Jeff Crowe said in a statement.


"ICC has recently reiterated that a zero tolerance attitude will be shown to abusive or insulting language and actions.


"So hopefully the teams in these remaining matches in the (Tri-) Series will focus on the business of playing and entertaining."


Sharma was fined 15 percent of his match fee from Sunday's tri-series one-day international in Sydney after he celebrated Symonds' dismissal by crudely pointing the batsmen to the dressing room during a heated exchange.


He was charged by the on-field umpires with a low level offence but Crowe said he wanted to remind both teams about their behaviour.


Lower end


"The gesture was a direct breach of the ICC Code of Conduct," Crowe said.


"I took into account the fact that Sharma may have been provoked and that this was his first offence and hence the penalty was at the lower end of the scale." Sharma was the fourth Indian player charged with breaching the code of conduct during the team's troubled tour of Australia.


Batsman Rohit Sharma was fined for dissent against Sri Lanka in Brisbane less than three weeks ago and Yuvraj Singh was charged, but later let off, with the same offence during the first test in Melbourne in December.


The most serious incident occurred in the second test in Sydney when spinner Harbhajan Singh was initially given a three-match ban for racially abusing Symonds.


The penalty was later changed to a fine after the charges were downgraded to a lesser offence on appeal after the row between the teams threatened to boilover.


The Indian cricket board took the unusual step of suspending the tour for two days and threatened to go home before the teams agreed to a truce.