[Cricket] Ollie Robinson suspended by ECB

[Sid in the Sharknado]

Indeed.

Your posts are very wise which means I was a bit surprised to learn you are not an old codger like most of the rest of us. Top work for having a well weldered and yet unrusted but seasoned upholstery of the mind tank

Old codgerdom comes to us all at some point, some sooner than others

I'm not old, I'm just boring

 

[Wardy's twin]

Strikes me there is a lot of discussion on this item and yet the real focus should be reducing real physical prejudice. 18 or 19 year old makes stupid comments which he acknowledges as stupid just move on and deal with real issues rather than waste effort.

 

[Eeyore]

Agree.

Let them have an investigation. Let him be suspended for a bit. Do it quickly. Let him do some reparations. Move on. Lessons learned.

The goons who want an instant exoneration are doing their racist homophobic sexist cause no good at all. And I say, come forth, apologists, and make fools of yourselves. I always like a laugh

That said, racists, you are being very unfair to the lad by making him your martyr. Selfish, as always

Except that many of us who feel there is a danger of this being over played do not fit that category. You are applying the modern Motte and Bailey tactic to your argument. That is not good for the debate.

 

[big nuts]

Except that many of us who feel there is a danger of this being over played do not fit that category. You are applying the modern Motte and Bailey tactic to your argument. That is not good for the debate.

You’ll be on the ignore list now.

 

[Blue Valkyrie]

ECB need to draw a line under this ASAP and PDQ.

OR is unforgiven until they do.

 

[Deleted member 22389]

Except that many of us who feel there is a danger of this being over played do not fit that category. You are applying the modern Motte and Bailey tactic to your argument. That is not good for the debate.

 

[Acker79]

Shemima Begum is trending on twitter because of the "Oh, look at the racist right; Ollie was 18 and shouldn't be held accountable, but Shemima at 14 deserves to have her citizen ship removed"/"Oh look at the liberal left, Shemima didn't know what she was doing because she was a kid, but Ollie deserves to be hung for his tweets" tweets.

 

[Baker lite]

Actions have consequences. The ECB had little choice, as harsh as it seems.

 

[Goldstone1976]

You’ll be on the ignore list now.

Who said that?

 

[Postman Pat]

And saying things like this doesn't help either:

However, Michael Carberry, who played six Tests for England between 2010 and 2014, told BBC Radio 5 Live that Robinson "wouldn't be playing Test cricket" if it was up to him.

"I don't believe this is a problem where you can rehabilitate someone," said Carberry.

"Robinson spoke about educating himself, but what is he talking about? I would be very interested to know."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/57383097
------------------------

In Carberry's mind no one can ever change, ever learn, ever grow.

Robinson left a county at Yorkshire which had a well publicized race problem at the time*, he then joined Sussex. Why couldn't being in a different environment and different people change his viewpoint on different issues, mature as a person and realise his previous comments and behaviour were wrong. Yet Carberry would effectively have ended his development and opportunity as a cricketer there and then.

*https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/spo...-to-learn-lessons-from-racism-inquiry-3173205

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

Shemima Begum is trending on twitter because of the "Oh, look at the racist right; Ollie was 18 and shouldn't be held accountable, but Shemima at 14 deserves to have her citizen ship removed"/"Oh look at the liberal left, Shemima didn't know what she was doing because she was a kid, but Ollie deserves to be hung for his tweets" tweets.

You are equating the reaction to writing some tweets on the internet with reaction to going abroad to join an evil, murderous terrorist group ? Blimey I’ve seen some whataboutery on NSC but that beggars belief. I am in no way defending the tweets but this debate is getting ridiculous.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Except that many of us who feel there is a danger of this being over played do not fit that category. You are applying the modern Motte and Bailey tactic to your argument. That is not good for the debate.

I personally also feel this is being overplayed.

But I don't think he should be instantly exonerated.

The authority have no choice other than to suspend him while they investigate surely? This is what would happen to me in my workplace if the same situation arose.

 

[wellquickwoody]

He was 19. Old enough to be a grandparent if he were from Croydon. He certainly wasn't over the rec, in short trousers, playing 'who won the war in 1964?':

Calm down, dear. Cricketer suspended for a bit for being a tit.:

 

[beorhthelm]

i cant fathom what is being investigated, he's already held his hands up. surely they cab cut to the sanctions immediately?

 

[wellquickwoody]

Actions have consequences. The ECB had little choice, as harsh as it seems.

You may live to remember that when the Palestinians have a little more about them.

 

[Billy the Fish]

i cant fathom what is being investigated, he's already held his hands up. surely they cab cut to the sanctions immediately?

Great project to be on if you're the investigator.

An hour to write a report, DND on, string it out for a couple of days, sit in the sun with a nice cold drink

 

[Acker79]

You are equating the reaction to writing some tweets on the internet with reaction to going abroad to join an evil, murderous terrorist group ? Blimey I’ve seen some whataboutery on NSC but that beggars belief. I am in no way defending the tweets but this debate is getting ridiculous.

No I'm not. I'm highlighting that idiots on twitter are.

 

[Poojah]

OK, I'm gonna say it; "I'm not racist, but...".

I'm not racist, but I grew up in Grimsby / Cleethorpes in the late 80s and 90s. I'm tremendously proud of where I'm from, it's an area that gets a worse rap than it deserves, but it certainly had and still has its issues.

It was, during my formative years, one of the least diverse places in England. A sizeable majority of the town's population were white British, and even now after an influx of people from Europe in the last decade or so it remains a very caucasian part of the world. As such, you are exposed to a reasonable amount of casual racism as a child, including from the likes of my parents and in particular my grandparents who, rightly or wrongly, were from a bygone era.

You weren't sent to the corner shop, there was another word for that. You didn't have a Chinese takeaway on a Saturday night, there was a shorthand phrase for that too. I don't remember specific instances, but there will have been words and phrases that I would never dream of uttering now as a more worldly and well travelled 36 year old, that I used back then. Not because I was a racist, even though the words undoubtedly were, but because they had been totally normalised in my life. I know that an apple is an apple because I was taught that. That's just what those things, those people, were called in the lexicon that I had learned.

I watched Michael Carberry's interview on SSN and I thought he made some good points. He rightly called out Oliver Downden's dismissive oversimplification of this story when he's never had to endure racism himself, as well as the clearly overly PR'd statement put out by Robinson, but I felt he let himself down when he inferred that someone capable of making those comments at 18 cannot be educated or 'rehabilitated'. That, for me, isn't entirely fair. Whilst legally an adult at that age, you are still a kid in many respects and despite how much of a free spirit I thought I was back then I was still very much the product of my environment and upbringing. Some good stuff, some bad stuff, but I'm not sure how responsible I was for either at that stage of my life.

Now, I'm aware of the danger of falling into another recurrant trope trotted out by defensive racists, but my very best friend growing up was an Indian lad. I honestly never gave much or any thought to the colour of his skin or his cultural heritage - I knew him from nursery all the way through to sixth form. It was the same for the kids at school - he was a really nice lad with the same values as the rest of us who everyone seemed to get on with. He was just Gurdeep. I don't ever remember race or religion being a factor at school, even in what was often quite a tough and toxic environment.

In the wider world though it was a bigger issue, particularly once we started drinking in pubs on a Friday or Saturday night. I'd notice very quickly that he'd be subject to everything from casual racist comments to more agressive threats for no other reason than what he looked like. I can think of a number of incidents whereby we both (along with our other mates) ended up in scraps instigated by racist pricks at least 10 years our senior (we'd have been 16 or 17 at the time). One night, after Grimsby had stayed up in the second flight after beating Louis Saha's Fulham on the final day, my mate was accused of being a Fulham fan 'in the wrong pub' because, y'know, we don't have people like that round here. Despite giving plenty of evidence to the contrary, we both ended up taking a beating of a lifetime at the hands of five or six blokes well into their thirties. It was absolutely out of order, but you begin to learn very quickly the damage that racism does.

Not long after that, I remember having a family barbecue to which I invited my mate. It was the summer of 2002, when 9/11 was still very fresh in the memory. As soon as he arrived, my brother in-law immediately went and gave him a pretend pat-down to check for weapons or explosives. Oh, the laughs that prevailed. For the record, he was of Sikh heritage, not Muslim, nor was he remotely religious. It was just a 'joke' at the expense of the colour of his skin. Despite the casual racism I'd been brought up with, I'd witnessed and experienced it from the other side. My mate expressed to me just how sick and tired he was of it all. The quips and jokes. The threats and aggression. Being a rare, Asian man in North East Lincs, in a world where Asians were becoming increasingly marginalised was clearly an exhausting experience for him.

Without a doubt, words and behaviour that might have seemed acceptable to me at 15 or 16 were viewed very differently at 18 or 19. Because, fundamentally, I had had the opportunity at that point to learn from my own experience and forge my own views and opinions. I don't know much about Ollie Robinson's upbringing, but I do believe that it's harsh to judge someone on their mindless musings a decade ago when they may well had not had the opportunity to make their own views on the world. I think that's a really important point.

I guarantee you this - my kids will never be exposed to the kind of casual racism that I was as a child. I hope they never utter a racist word in their life, which is probably unrealistic as you cannot control what they are exposed to via their peers at school, but if I ever hear it they will be quickly corrected. Growing up in Leeds in the 2020's, they're already exposed to a far more diverse environment than I was and it's noticable that they are far less aware of colour than I would have been at their age. They're also growing up in a different era where abuse is far more likely to be called out for what it is than it would have done when I was growing up. But it will take a long time for the world to become completely colour-blind, if that's even possible.

Rather than banning Ollie Robinson from cricket, and rather than him putting out generic, unfelt apologies via PR channels, I'd much rather he explained how he came to hold those views as acceptable at 18 and how, 10 years on, he came to learn that he was so profoundly wrong. We're punishing an individual for society's problem, so instead why don't we use the individual to help educate society - in particular all those 18 year old boys who look up to the likes of Ollie Robinson who might just see the world through a similar lens to how he did at their age.

 

[LamieRobertson]

I personally also feel this is being overplayed.

But I don't think he should be instantly exonerated.

The authority have no choice other than to suspend him while they investigate surely? This is what would happen to me in my workplace if the same situation arose.

There doesn’t seem much more to investigate......by all means carry out due diligence ...but I don’t see the problem with him playing cricket in the meantime

 

[amexer]

People who put things like this on social media whatever age have to know that if it comes to light the consequence is more than having to make an apology.