Cricket Australia has pulled a mouth freshener advertisement amid complaints it promoted a company that also sells tobacco products.
It says it will withdraw the ads that were displayed on the boundary rope during seven matches between Australia and India after learning they could be promoting tobacco.
Spokesman Peter Young said Cricket Australia had sought a translation of the ads, which are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, from the Indian government and had been reassured that they promoted mouthwash.
But the majority of Indians who saw the ad would immediately associate it with tobacco, said Dr Nevin Wilson, who heads the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease's Southeast Asian office in New Delhi, India.
Dr Wilson said direct or indirect advertising of tobacco products was illegal in India, where there were 900,000 deaths each year related to tobacco.
The advertisements bore the name "Kamla Pasand", an Indian brand of tobacco products and non-tobacco mouth fresheners.
But Dr Wilson said that even if it was the mouth fresheners being promoted, Indians associate the brand with tobacco.
"I would take any advertisement from the tobacco industry with a very large pinch of salt," he said.
Anne Jones, head of Action on Smoking and Health Australia (ASH), which complained about the ads in January, said complaints were now being made to the Indian government.
She said the Indian tobacco companies were "brand stretching", using brands synonymous with tobacco to market other products.
"All of the advice we have had from India is there is no mouthwash, this is a leading chewing tobacco brand," she said.
"If you are a responsible organisation (accepting) advertising in another language that you don't understand, it's obviously important to find out what that ad says."
Cricket Australia said it was in the process of pulling the ads on Tuesday after there appeared to be "strong parallels" between the brand of mouthwash advertised during the matches, to a brand of chewing tobacco.
"We asked (the Indian government's) advice because we are not familiar with the Hindi language," Mr Young said.
"They came back and said it's an Indian mouthwash - or at least they said it's not a tobacco product.
"It appears that there is a tobacco company with the same or similar brand name to the product that is being advertised.
"We have just become uneasy about it and said, let's withdraw this."
The Hindi ads were displayed on the boundary rope during the Australia-India Test matches in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Adelaide, two Twenty20 international matches and a one-day international match, Mr Young said.
Mr Young said concerns about the ads were brought to the attention of Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland on Monday after a letter from the federal health department.
Health Minister Tanya Plibersek said in a statement there had been a number of complaints about the ads and further information was being sought from Cricket Australia.
Breaches of tobacco advertising bans could attract a fine of $66,000, she said.
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