Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) President Sharad Pawar believes Andrew Symonds mistook hostile crowd antics for racism and insisted that the episode would not sour Indian Cricket Board’s relation with its Australian counterpart.

Reacting to reports that Symonds had been subjected to monkey chants in Vadodara, Nagpur and in Mumbai, Pawar assured that International Cricket Council’s Anti-Racism Code would be strictly adhered to but he also felt that it was not a case of racism.

“We respect that we have to protect the individual player. There is a complaint and we will take the appropriate action,” Pawar said.

“I believe this is a misunderstanding; a language issue. There are many languages spoken in India, and I don’t understand many of them myself. Still, it is the responsibility of the Indian board to execute that (the ICC’s anti-racism code). There have already been steps taken,” he added.

He also dismissed the idea that the incident would have any adverse effect on the relationship between the cricket boards of both the countries. “This will not at all affect our relationship with Cricket Australia. We have a very strong relationship and we are hoping that will continue,: he asserted.

After Pawar announced that BCCI would look into the complaint, the local media here dubbed his comments as “backdown by the BCCI”, pointing out that the Board had initially refused to acknowledged the incident in Vadodara.

Match Referee Chris Broad has written to the International Cricket Council (ICC) confirming racial comments were indeed hurled by the crowd during the fifth match at Vadodara. Symonds and the entire Australian team are miffed with the Indian crowd.

The daily also admitted that reports of an Australian cameraman capturing racial crowd behaviour during the Nagpur one-dayer was actually a rumour.