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That dude spent longer wrestling his cagoul today than most of our opening stands in recent Tests.
Of course the brave keyboard warriors of social media have been at it, and with the same attention to detail as the ECB, by harassing Ollie Robinson of Kent, who's had nothing to do with this.
We have a batting collective where a) individual confidence is low in some key players and b) we're missing some higher grade players. I have absolutely zero problem with them deciding to go for the draw because it gave the opportunity for Sibley and Crawley to try to find some form, an opportunity one of them took. that is worth more than going for a potential win here because the draw means it's a winner takes all Test next week.
I applaud you for getting out there. If I can still move my knees at 50, I shall be surprised!
Having said that I'm stiff this morning but I'm pretty sure that is from batting a long time, which I rarely do!
It's almost as if human rights don't matter if there's money around.
*An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.
The problem for the ECB isn't so much that Robinson is a big ol' racist. It's that you have a number of things happening that make up a far larger issue. You have the Azeem Rafiq case still in the pipeline against Yorkshire. Dawood and Holder are most unhappy with their case against the ECB. Michael Carberry's words about racism within county cricket from last year haven't gone away. It wasn't so long ago that you had the Alex Hepburn case involving Joe Clarke and Tom Kohler-Cadmore. English cricket has been under the microscope and rightly so. If they'd let the tweets come to light and then done nothing, it looks like they aren't really bothered by them, and right now no senior body wants that. Historic tweets have seen bans and fines in football. There's not really any new ground being broken here. It's also not long ago that we had Shannon Gabriel banned for muttering rather pathetic comments to Joe Root. If Gabriel had been let off with no ban, there would have been uproar.
A one-match ban makes the ECB look like they take it seriously and makes Robinson look like he's punished. A longer ban was unjustified, no ban gets bad headlines, and the ECB was never going to risk that with The Hundred launching this year.
The charge of hypocrisy as Gassage rightly points out regarding Dubai is one you could apply to any number of sports. Cricket, rugby sevens, football, F1 for some of the places it goes too.
The same is also true of online racist abuse. Which one ultimately comes closest to breaking laws? SJWs are often boring tedious individuals and I've had more than my fair share of shit with them. But they don't exist in a racist vacuum.
Also: the folk booing England for taking a knee at the minute want politics out of sport. Looking forward to the same comments now that Dowden's waded in.
As it is, it looks like they're making a cheap point while failing to tackle any of the structural issues that Michael Carberry was talking about. Why do counties where there are large numbers of people from Asian backgrounds playing amateur cricket fail to bring them through to professional level? Why is the MCC still allowed to exert such influence over the game? Why is club management and coaching still overwhelmingly white?
I'm not sure what the duty of care would be for someone employed now by the ECB over matters that occurred when they weren't employed by the ECB.
It is a cheap point, no question. So you have to look at why they're prepared to ban him for a Test.
https://i.imgur.com/3SMBVvw.png
So much of the ECB's future plans rides on this being a success, even more now we've lost so much spectator time and money during the pandemic. It should be remembered that Robinson's tweets weren't just racist but sexist as well. The marketing for the Hundred has been pushing women and children from the word go right down to consulting Mumsnet. it's debatable how far T100 can push the men's game forward but there is the potential for pushing the women's game forward a great deal.
So if an England cricketer ends up on the front pages for sexist tweets and your new flagship event going live in 44 days has been trying to draw women in from the very start, I don't think there's any way you can sit back and do nothing about that same cricketer.
As for all the other points... I don't disagree. Getting into the glass ceilings in cricket would be a very long thread in its own right.
*An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.
He was 18 years old and the Tweets are offensive - he was an adult. I think his career could be over - the ECB's problem will be with its sponsors which won't want Robinson in the England team, especially when England plays India or Pakistan. There are some choice Tweets about Robinson doing the rounds from people who will continue to hound him, the ECB, and their sponsors online.
The ECB has acted responsibly IMHO.
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!