Melbourne, Feb 6: Cricket Australia will surrender hundreds of thousands of dollars in boundary line advertising after it emerged it may have been illegally promoting tobacco.
The snap backdown last night came after the federal Health Department launched an investigation into advertisements in Hindi on the boundary rope for Australia-India Test matches in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Adelaide.
The ads for a company that makes chewing tobacco and mouth-wash were aimed at the massive TV audience in India.
They also featured at the Twenty20 games in Sydney and Melbourne and were due to be shown during a series of one-day internationals this month.
Health Minister Tanya Plibersek said Cricket Australia faced fines of up to $66,000 for each breach of the 1992 tobacco advertising ban.
"The Gillard Government has received a number of complaints alleging that advertisements for tobacco products have been displayed at cricket grounds," she said.
"The Government is taking the allegations very seriously and has written to Cricket Australia seeking detailed information about the advertising."
A translation says: "Kamla likes fragrant Chaini mouth freshener".
Anti-smoking groups said it was a tricky way of getting around the ban.
Concerns were first raised with Cricket Australia during the Boxing Day Test and the ads were briefly withdrawn. They were put back after Cricket Australia was given an assurance by the Indian High Commission that the product was mouth-wash and it did not contain any tobacco.
Cricket Australia's Peter Young last night told the Herald Sun: "We have decided to withdraw these ads. The more questions we ask, the uneasier we're becoming about the issue and it being the same brand name as tobacco."
Action on Smoking and Health chief executive Anne Jones said Cricket Australia was naive.
"It's a marketing tool tobacco companies are very, very good at. It is brand stretching and says chewing tobacco to people in India just like Benson & Hedges says smoking without mentioning tobacco," she said.
"There are about 900,000 tobacco-related deaths a year in India and a leading cause is from chewing tobacco."

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