England pacer Ollie Robinson, heavily criticised and even dropped from the squad for his inappropriate remarks made over Twitter eight years ago, was cleared to resume his playing career after receiving a fine and eight-match suspension, five of those suspended for two years.
The pacer was handed a fine of £3200 and suspension of eight matches for finding him in breach of “ECB Directives 3.3 and 3.4 in relation to a number of offensive tweets which were posted between 2012 and 2014, when he was aged between 18 and 20.”
However, the discipline commission also cleared Robinson to continue his England career after recognising that he has already gone through suspension for the other three matches. The pacer was dropped from England’s squad for the Edgbaston Test last month against New Zealand and voluntarily withdrew from Sussex’s two T20 Blast fixtures.
Thus, the discipline commission stated that Robinson is free to play cricket with immediate effect, green signalling his availability to England for the five-Test series against India starting August 4.
Robinson agreed to the verdict issued against him, reiterating
“I am incredibly embarrassed and ashamed about the tweets I posted many years ago and apologise unreservedly for their contents.”
The pacer also said he’ll be working with ECB and Professional Cricketers’ Association to ensure others can learn from his mistakes and educate themselves on various aspects of life.
Robinson was slammed over social media for the resurfacing of his old tweets where he could be read making racist and sexist remarks. The screenshots of those historic tweets were brought to light only hours after the pacer stood in a ‘moment of unity’ with the rest of England players on debut at Lord’s wearing shirts that called out various forms of discrimination.
