England and Wales Cricket Board on Monday suspended pacer Ollie Robinson from all international cricket. The ECB took its course of action, “pending the outcome of a disciplinary investigation following historic tweets he posted in 2012 and 2013.”
Robinson has been asked to leave the England camp and return to his county club, Sussex, and is therefore unavailable to play the second Test against New Zealand, starting Thursday.
On the day of his Test debut at Lord’s last Wednesday, Robinson had to issue a public apology after his “racist and sexist” comments made on Twitter as a teenager came to light.
Since those tweets were brought back only a few hours after England players had stood for a ‘moment of unity’ wearing T-shirts that carried messages against various forms of discrimination, the criticism he faced for his inappropriate comments was quite severe.
While his off-field remarks were disappointing to learn of, Robinson’s on-field display was quite impressive for a debutant, as he showed fantastic skill and resolve in delivering spells of 4/75 and 3/36, apart from scoring an important knock of 42 in-between.
England skipper Joe Root, thus, chose his words wisely as he spoke of Robinson after the drawn Test, saying, even though the pacer was “exceptional” with his performance, his conduct historically was just “not acceptable”.
“He’s contributed well with the bat, his performance with the ball was excellent. He’s showed high levels of skill and he’s definitely got the game that can be successful in Test cricket,”
Root was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo.
“But in regards to the stuff that’s happened off the field, it’s not acceptable within our game.
We all know that. He addressed the dressing room straight away. He obviously spoke to you guys and other media outlets straight away, fronted up to it.
He showed a lot of remorse from that point onwards. You can see it’s very genuine from how he’s been around the group and the team.”
The ECB’s decision comes at a time when a genuine question mark is being raised over the environment sustained at the junior and senior domestic level game in the UK.
The county game is experiencing multiple accusations of unequal treatment across the board, with players, support staff members and others calling out various clubs since last year.
The fact that Robinson’s potential replacement for the next Test is Craig Overton, who has previously faced racial abuse allegations himself, reflects badly on the ECB, which needs to do more to educate these players on various off-field issues.
