Is a tweet ever ‘old news’?

Last week, to the delight of many fans test cricket returned to Lords, the home of cricket, where England locked horns in the first of two tests against New Zealand. There were some fine individual performances either side of a full day lost to rain on the Friday that pushed the contest towards its tiresome conclusion of a draw.

Unfortunately though, and in spite of a fine double hundred by Devon Conway, a 6 wicket haul in the first innings by Tim Southee and a solid century by Rory Burns that sees all three names added to the honours board in the Long Room, the game was marred by the revelation of some tweets that England debutant Ollie Robinson, who was the pick of the home bowlers had made in 2012 and 2013.

Since then the ECB have come in heavy-handed and dropped the 27 year old from the second test which starts this coming Thursday at Edgbaston, and banned him indefinitely from International cricket pending investigations.

In spite of oft-quoted advice that politics and sport should never mix, Prime Minister Boris Johnson aired his disapproval of the decision in support of an earlier statement by Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden. So who is right?
Throughout the South Africa apartheid era we saw how sport, and cricket in particular was used as a political pawn with very bad press, and now the shoe is on the other foot, and ultimately it is cricket and the supporters who will suffer.

Personally, I don’t agree with the actions of the ECB. Ollie Robinson offered a statement of remorse after the first day’s play saying that he was ‘embarrassed’ and ‘ashamed’. Skipper Joe Root supported him and said, "It's a lesson to everyone in the game," and then continued by saying "We've started doing a lot of good work as a team and we'll continue to do that. We want to make the game as inclusive and diverse as we possibly can and we'll continue to keep looking at finding ways to make that possible."

Everyone has made mistakes in their lives, and if you dig deep enough then you will most likely find a bit of dirt on pretty much anybody, but I think that it is time to put things into perspective. I certainly don’t condone racism or sexism in anyway, but equally I do believe that the ECB’s reputation would be less-tarnished right now if they were to have shown some understanding and forgiveness. Grace is far more powerful than pointing a finger or wielding an axe. - Remember the powerful story surrounding ‘grace’ in Les Misérables by Victor Hugo?

I only hope that the powers-that-be conclude their investigation quickly so that we can get on with the rest of the summer, and that Mr Robinson has his second chance. The poor lad is undoubtedly suffering, and the next thing is we could well see an impaired second performance that will be partly blamed on mental health issues. Where does it all stop?