when he was in his late teens. the england and wales cricket board said robinson had been suspended while a disciplinary investigation is conducted. well a little earlier, my colleague, reeta chakrabarti spoke to the former england cricket captain, david gower. he told her that what 0llie robinson had written was simply wrong. first of all, one has to always preface everything you say on this matter by saying that one entirely disagrees what was written in those tweets all those years ago. i mean, no one is condoning anything racist or sexist. so having done that, in the space of the last four or five days we ve all had time to move on. consider, first of all, how the affair was brought to light which had nothing to do with ecb, for instance, doing their own research prior to the game which might or might not have made life easier for everyone concerned, but now that we know it is out there and know that we know he has apologised, now that we know he has already contrite and know that
that you say that the cricketing board should have done its own investigations earlier, because if it had unearthed to these offensive messages, what action should then have taken? it would then have had to have done something, applied some sanction. yes. the point first of all about that is that you have control of the situation. and, let s face it, if you applied for a job, at a young person, not 27, 28 years old is applying for a job say come out of school or out of university, a lot of companies will do an internet trawl. and will find out what you put on facebook, will find out what you put on twitter, instagram, everything. and if you have done something wrong they will confront you with that at the interview. so what they are doing is preempting anything awkward. so ecb, 0k yes it takes time and effort and someone has to be delegated to do this if that is the system, but had they found out about it they would have had to have a very awkward conversation with the selectors, with
he was when he first wrote those things, we imagine he has changed. i think most people in that position would have changed. so not to condone anything that happened all that time ago, but my view would have been, and is very straightforward, that you have a chance here not to suspend someone just when they have started, successfully, an international career, but to use this in a very different way and you can still have your investigation. you can still investigate what you want out of this affair but you say to him, look, carry on playing, that s fine, but you have under the role now which you are going to fulfil for us at the ecb and that is to be a sort of quasi ambassador on this topic. you are going to go out there and talk to county cricketers, to club cricketers, to anyone who wants to listen to you. and they don t have to be cricketers, they could be anyone. and you can tell them that first of all the views you held or put out in public all those years ago were wrong, and seco