Cricket Australia remains confident Australian players will participate in the third season of the Indian Premier League despite the recent threats made by Indian right-wing political party Shiv Sena.
In the wake of the recent attacks on Indian students in Melbourne, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray said the party would not let 'kangaroo cricketers' play in its home state of Maharashtra where two major cities, Mumbai and Nagpur, hold IPL games.
But despite the concerns, CA's general manager of public affairs Peter Young promised that all the necessary safety precautions will be taken before players depart for the IPL.
"At the moment we're continuing to take expert advice on the situation in India. The players that we've spoken to are expressing their comfort about going to India but before they go to India, we'll ensure they have up-to-date knowledge about the situation from a security and safety point of view so that before they make their decisions they can make fully-informed decisions," Young said on Wednesday.
When asked if CA would pull its players out of India if the situation became more volatile, Young said: "That's a hypothetical question, at the moment we're not seeing any evidence of that, our policy at Cricket Australia is safety first, we've got a track record that speaks for itself on that front."
"What we'll be doing is ensuring that cricket players have access to all of the information and advice we've got so when they make a decision about going to the IPL they can make it on an informed basis."
Cricket legends Shane Warne and Matthew Hayden, who both play in the IPL, have expressed sadness about the attacks on Indian students but said they would continue to play India.
Federation of Indian Students of Australia Advisory Board Chairman Gautam Gupta welcomed the support from Warne and Hayden and hopes to use cricket as a way of building the relationship between Australians and Indians.
"We will be sending an official letter requesting the Indian political party Shiv Sena and their leader Mr Bal Thackeray to withdraw these sanctions against Australian cricketers and in fact indeed welcome them in India as partners of all Indians in Australia," he said.
"We see us developing further, growing further and using cricket as a very strong bond between Indians and Australians."
"Keeping that in context we will request that all Indians to keep that in mind that Australian cricketers are friends of Indians in Australia."
Meanwhile, Young said the crowd at Adelaide Oval for the second one-dayer against West Indies was disappointing and CA will be looking at what it can do to improve it in future years.
"We would have preferred a bigger crowd in Adelaide last night and here at the MCG last Sunday. One of the important indicators is the total number of people watching and if you look at the TV ratings, we still had more than a million people watching the game."
"What we'll be doing at the end of the season is sitting down with our formal research to understand exactly what the public does want from us and we'll be taking that on board before we start planning for future seasons."