Quote Originally Posted by Elwood Blues View Post
No I was not tying myself in knots Bob.

If you read my post carefully you will see that I have not expressed my view on the Robinson situation, indeed I used terms such as "people weren't and also "they" whenever I referred to anyone supporting the view that he should not be suspended.

I was therefore not defending him for him but seeking to point out that the people who were defending him were doing so because they were against the punishment not because they supported racism. They may have been "Robinson apologists" but not "racist apologists".

I you really want my view (instead of presuming to know what my views are which you have form for in my case and others as well) they are that I can agree with what the ECB has done in suspending him pending investigation as long as they pull their fingers out and get it sorted out quickly.

Rather than give a long answer to the rest of your epistle I will just say I am in in agreement with this comment I saw which I think in its way covers the subject

"If he has done something like that nine years ago, and since then he has learnt and he has 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,

I was a young man once, I did a lot of rubbish as a youngster, and as you go through life you learn and recognise ‘Oh, perhaps what I did at 18 doesn’t apply now, I can’t behave like that now’"

Over to you. but please try not to put words in my mouth in future
Well, I'm glad you finally outlined what you thought because it was not clear beforehand. If I'm guilty of jumping to conclusions (and I'm still not 100 per cent sure I did), I apologise, but then I can say the same about you. I have taken care not to call anyone in this thread, or Ollie Robinson for that matter, a racist, but, clearly, there was an instance of racism from him at one time, so what I have been saying is that people who seek to excuse or defend him when it comes to that instance of racism are apologists.

I have never said they are "racist apologists", but they are racism apologists. I think there is a, subtle, difference between the two because the first one carries the suggestion that the apologist is a racist themselves, whereas I hope the second one is suggestive of someone who is being an apologist for an act of racism because that is what meant when I said some in this thread were being apologists for racism..

I'd read what Michael Holding had to say on the matter and, for me, it all boils down to what he means by "I don't think you should come down too hard on him". I can confirm that i "did a lot of rubbish as a youngster", but that rubbish never stretched to putting downright offensive opinions into the public domain of the type Robinson did at an age when he was, to all intents and purposes, considered to be an adult. Because of that, I'm firmly of the opinion that Robinson should have been suspended or omitted from at least the test following his debut.

I've said that there is the precedent here of the Craig Overton case where he served a two game ban and would argue that such a punishment is not coming down too hard on Robinson in the way that, say, a four game one might be. However, if it is decided that missing the current test is sufficient punishment for him, then so be it - the important thing is that he has served a punishment for what he did which, for the reasons I mentioned when I talked about the four players Robinson may well play international cricket for England with in the future, had to be imposed.