Legendary England pacer James Anderson’s old tweet has resurfaced in which he is making fun of his bowling partner Stuart Broad and calls his hairstyle like that of a “15 yr old lesbian”. This has come under fire especially after the suspension of Ollie Robinson for his decade-old racist and sexist tweets.
Robinson had made some derogatory tweets when he was 18 years old and which popped up again when he made an impressive Test debut for England against New Zealand at Lord’s recently. He picked 7 wickets and played an important knock of 42 in England's 1st innings.
He apologized for his tweets, but the ECB still suspended him from international cricket and sent him back to his county Sussex until further action is being planned.
However, the UK sports and culture minister has said that ECB is being too harsh with Robinson and they should rethink the punishment they want to mete out to the bowler and got support from UK PM Boris Johnson as well.
In all this melee, James Anderson has found himself in hot water over his tweet calling Stuart Broad a ’15 yr old lesbian’ which was made more than 10 years ago. The tweet has been deleted now.
Anderson in an interview with Sky Sports emphasized the need for educating the players so that they do not make mistakes. He also called himself a changed man.
“The historical stuff, for me, it was 10, 11 years ago. I have certainly changed as a person since then. That’s the difficulty; things do change and you do make mistakes,” he said.
Not only Anderson but England’s World Cup-winning captain Eoin Morgan and deputy Jos Buttler are also under scrutiny over their old tweets in which they apparently mock Indian fans’ English language and them calling the players ‘sir’.
Considering ECB's zero-tolerance policy for any sort of discrimination, Morgan, and Buttler might face some trouble.
On June 8, wisden.com shared a racist tweet by one of the current England players without revealing the player’s name which is also under investigation. Earlier, off-spinner Dom Bess deactivated his Twitter account after getting recalled for the Test squad ahead of the second Test against New Zealand starting June 10.
(Indian Express inputs)
