NEW DELHI, Nov 14: The Indian media on Wednesday came down heavily on Cricket Australia’s (CA) ongoing dispute with three international news agencies, saying it could harm the sport’s future.

The major global agencies, AFP, Reuters and AP, have boycotted the ongoing Test series against Sri Lanka over CA’s demand to rights of pictures of the matches.

The CA wants the media organisations to pay for the right to distribute photographs from the event but the agencies have refused, saying it threatens journalistic integrity.

“What Cricket Australia is doing is stupid,” veteran cricket writer Ramaswamy Mohan, sports editor of the Chennai-based Deccan Chronicle, told AFP.

“Cricket and the media have co-existed for years and that helped to make the game popular world-wide. Now, one arm of that partnership wants to do away with the other arm.

“The affect is already being felt because of the low interest in the first Australia-Sri Lanka Test in Brisbane. I can’t imagine we will not have pictures or text from the second Test either.

“If Muttiah Muralitharan equals Shane Warne’s world record in Hobart, the world would want to see pictures of that historic wicket and read what he has to say.

“Surely, we are not going to make do with his passport-size picture,” said Mohan.

Muralitharan needs six wickets to equal Warne’s world record tally of 708.

The Times of India slammed the Indian cricket board’s backing of CA’s stance, saying the obsession with money threatened the spirit of sport.

“Money-minded cricket administrators are putting a price on everything, including pictures of cricket matches, thereby threatening to take fun out of sports,” the daily wrote.—AFP