Andrew Strauss offers advice to Azeem Rafiq after his Twitter attack on Coach John Abraham
After being left out of the England U-19 side for the second Test at Scarborough against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/John-Abrahams-c67233 is a useless w****r.”
Rafiq had captained England during their 199-run defeat in their first Test and was dropped for obvious reasons, but he did not handle the news too well. He is under investigation by the England Cricket Board which is contemplating Rafiq’s future. An inside source said that because of this incident, Rafiq might lose his place on the team.
When Captain Andrew Strauss was asked about the incident, he said that whatever the age of the player may be, every player must take responsibility for his actions. "What I would say is that if you haven't led by example and have let yourself down you've got to take it on the chin and learn from it," he said. "For a start players should be aware that what they write on Twitter is going to be seen by people they might not want it to be seen by. We've had a number of occasions of that happening, so I'd say to be very careful on that.” Strauss said.
Strauss also stressed on the need for players to curb their frustrations while speaking out against board officials. He said that there were ways of reacting to things and he thought that Rafiq reacted in the wrong way. He said that the coach had taken him off the squad for a valid reason and Rafiq had responded by posting vile comments on Twitter. Strauss believed that the best thing to do was to learn from it and move on.
It was suggested that players with Asian backgrounds were problematic in one way or the other. Examples of Asian players can be seen from over a decade ago when http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Aftab-Habib-c42204 and Usman Afzaal did the same. Recent examples include Owais Shah, who was dropped from the one day team because of his poor fielding while Samil Patel, who had gained weight, completely refused to get into shape.
However, Strauss rejected that theory. He said that England had introduced quite a few English players of Pakistani origin and he thought that they had no problems in mixing with the rest of the players. He didn’t think it was an issue. Strauss said that the important thing was that players from different backgrounds came together, were part of one team and performed their best to get positive results.
Yorkshire's coach, Marty Moxon said: “I am deeply disappointed. Rafiq is a player of great potential and it is important that he draws the right lessons from this.” Rafiq, who was involved in another controversy at the start of his career when he played in the Twenty20 Cup quarterfinal in 2008 for http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Durham-c782 when he didn’t hold a British passport, was said to be sorry about his comments. An inside source revealed that he is set to make an official apology to John Abraham and the ECB.
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