Michael Holding, a retired Jamaican fast bowler, believes Ollie Robinson should not be penalized harshly for his racist and sexist remarks from the past if an investigation shows he has altered his ways since then.
After historic tweets surfaced last week when he made his impressive test debut at Lord’s, Robinson has been pulled out of England’s second test against New Zealand, which begins on Thursday at Edgbaston. Holding believes the ECB took the appropriate course of action in an interview with Sky Sports on Tuesday.
Holding said that if he did something like that nine years ago and has since then learned and done nothing similar, has altered his ways in recent years, then Holding thinks ECB shouldn’t be too harsh on him.
“You can suspend him to conduct an investigation. You don’t let him keep playing, say, while an inquiry is underway. Because if you find out something bad in that investigation, you can’t let him keep playing. But do it swiftly; let’s get this over with as soon as possible,” Holding suggested.
Fast bowler James Anderson stated on Tuesday that England players have accepted Ollie Robinson’s apologies for racist and sexist statements he made on social media as a teenager. England’s all-time leading wicket-taker Anderson told reporters that Ollie had apologized “unreservedly” in the dressing room for the 2012-13 Twitter tweets.
According to cricket website Wisden.com, the ECB is now looking into a second England cricketer for a prior “offensive” social media post.
