England Debutant Ollie Robinson Apologises For Posting Racist And Sexist Tweets As A Teenager
Published - 03 Jun 2021, 11:53 AM | Updated - 23 Aug 2024, 12:47 AM
Pacer Ollie Robinson has a bright start to his Test career on Wednesday as he returned as England‘s best bowler on the day against New Zealand at Lord’s. However, by the end of the day, the 27-year-old had landed in hot waters after his “racist and sexist” tweets from 8 years ago resurfaced and caught the public attention, for which the seamer apologized.
The tweets by Ollie Robinson which have now gained controversy were sent between April 2012 and June 2013; those included use of the ‘N’ word, comments targeting a particular religion, derogatory comments about women and people of Asian heritage. He was aged 18 and 19 at that time, all for which he is deeply “ashamed”.
“On the biggest day of my career so far, I am embarrassed by the racist and sexist tweets that I posted over eight years ago, which have today become public. I want to make it clear that I’m not racist and I’m not sexist.“I deeply regret my actions, and I am ashamed of making such remarks. I would like to unreservedly apologise to anyone I have offended, my teammates and the game as a whole in what has been a day of action and awareness in combatting discrimination from our sport,” he added.“I don’t want something that happened eight years ago to diminish the efforts of my teammates and the ECB as they continue to build meaningful action with their comprehensive initiatives and efforts, which I fully endorse and support.“I will continue to educate myself, look for advice and work with the support network that is available to me to learn more about getting better in this area. I am sorry, and I have certainly learned my lesson today.”
Ollie Robinson may face disciplinary action from ECB
Ironically, this controversy sparked in the backdrop of everyone involved in the series participating in a ‘moment of unity’ before play in a drive to show their collective stance against any form of discrimination in cricket.
“I do not have the words to express how disappointed I am that an England Men’s player has chosen to write tweets of this nature, however long ago that might have been. Any person reading those words, particularly a woman or person of colour, would take away an image of cricket and cricketers that is completely unacceptable. We are better than this,” Harrison said.“We have a zero-tolerance stance to any form of discrimination and there are rules in place that handle conduct of this nature. We will initiate a full investigation as part of our disciplinary process.”
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