ECB promises 'appropriate action' over England players' tweets

THE England and Wales Cricket Board has promised to take "relevant and appropriate action" after questions were raised publicly about historical tweets from several England players.

Fast bowler Ollie Robinson has been ruled out of England's second Test against New Zealand starting at Edgbaston on Thursday (10) after historical tweets came to light last week when he made his Test debut at Lord's.

The ECB is also investigating a second England cricketer for historical "offensive" social media posts, cricket website Wisden.com reported on Monday (7).

Wisden said it had uncovered a racist tweet but had chosen not to disclose the identity of the player because he was under 16 when it was posted. Since then tweets by other England players have come to light.

"Since we were alerted to offensive tweets last week, a number of historical social media posts by other individuals have been questioned publicly as well," an ECB spokesperson was quoted as saying by the BBC on Tuesday (8).

"There is no place for discrimination in our sport, and we are committed to taking relevant and appropriate action where required.

"Given the concerns which have been raised are clearly now broader than a single case, the ECB board will discuss how we deal with issues over historical social media material in a timely and appropriate manner.

"Each case will be considered on an individual basis, looking at all the facts."

The 27-year-old Robinson apologised "unreservedly" in the dressing room for the 2012-13 Twitter posts and James Anderson told reporters that had been accepted.

Meanwhile, Michael Holding said that ECB should not "come down too hard" on Robinson for old racist and sexist comments he made on Twitter if the fast bowler has since changed his behaviour.

"(It was) eight, nine years ago. Can the ECB find out please, if beyond that time, Robinson has kept on behaving like that, saying things like that, tweeting things like that?" Holding told Sky Sports on Tuesday (8).

"If he has done something like that nine years ago, and since then he has learnt and done nothing like that and he has changed his ways in recent years, then I don't think you should come down too hard on him."

Holding said the ECB had taken the right course of action by suspending the 27-year-old to investigate the matter.

"You don't allow him to continue playing while an investigation is going on at the same time, because if you find out things that are horrible coming out in that investigation," he said. "But do it quickly, let's get it over with quickly."