Cricket Australia on Wednesday slammed the vile and racist comments directed at cricketer Dan Christian after he revealed that he experienced casual racism in Australian cricket.

According to a report in ESPNCricinfo, the board has also launched an investigation to identify and potentially sanction the senders of racist abuse towards Christian on social media a day after the all-rounder, who is Aboriginal, appeared on Cricket Australia's new series Cricket Connecting Country.

On their official Twitter handle, Cricket Australia said: "We are deeply disappointed to see blatantly racist and uneducated comments in the aftermath of Cricket Connecting Country's premiere last night.”

Dan Christian opens up about casual racism in Australian cricket

“Whilst we have chosen not to name the publisher of these comments publicly, we want to strongly reinforce that any form of racism or discrimination has no place in cricket, sport or wider society. Comments like these demonstrate just how far we still have to go,” they added.

Australia women’s wicketkeeper Alyssa Healy was one of the first to flag the racist comments on Thursday and responded with her support of Christian who is currently in the UK playing in the T20 Blast: "This sort of stuff is the very reason that these conversations need to keep happening..... keep up the good work @danchristian54."

Christian, who represented Australia in 19 ODIs and 16 T20Is, had spoken about the subtle kind of racism that exists in the Australian setup.

"I think it (racism) is an issue in Australian cricket, I don't think it's as 'in your face' as you might see around the world or even elsewhere in Australian culture. I think it's definitely there, it's more of casual racism, just little throwaway lines here and there, made to be jokes and a lot of that for me personally has been around the color of my skin and the fact that I don't look Aboriginal or whatever that means. That's the most noticeable thing for me,” Christian had said on the show on Wednesday.

(IANS inputs)