Alex Davies banned and fined over historic offensive tweets

Alex Davies, the Warwickshire wicketkeeper-batter, has been banned for five matches - four of them suspended - and fined £1500 for a series of offensive tweets he posted as a teenager.

Davies, who joined Warwickshire ahead of the 2022 season, was one of five Lancashire players investigated internally for posting social media messages containing "discriminatory language" last season.

The Lancashire Telegraph reported in June that Davies, Liam Hurt, Luke Wells, Josh Bohannon and Richard Gleeson were under investigation, following the emergence of Ollie Robinson's historic tweets during his England Test debut. The players were handed formal warnings by the club.

A disciplinary panel convened by the ECB's Cricket Discipline Commission (CDC) found that Davies' tweets were "in clear breach of the ECB's anti-discrimination policy", adding that "the gravity of this matter lies not just within the nature of the posts themselves, but because the message must be made clear to all who play the professional game, and to all those who play elsewhere, that such behaviour will not tolerated."

The CDC report said: "AD [Davies] acted in breach of these ECB directives because of his posting of a series of 17 offensive tweets from his Twitter account over a period of 19 months between September 3, 2011 and April 6, 2013, when he was aged 17 and 18.

"At all material times he was a registered cricketer with LCCC [Lancashire]. He accepts that he received training in the use of social media throughout this period, although the panel accepts that the sophistication of that training has advanced significantly since.

"These tweets contained a number of racist, sexist, disablist, homophobic and other offensive remarks. They were publicly accessible until June 2021, when AD deleted his Twitter account."

The report added that there were several mitigating factors in Davies' defence. These included the time period - eight years - that had elapsed since his tweets were posted, a lack of previous disciplinary offences committed, his voluntary work within the sport, and character references "which persuasively demonstrated that a naïve and at times reckless young man has matured beyond his years, and is now regarded as both a leader and a role model by his peers in the professional game".

"AD's remorse and shame are, in the panel's view, both sincere and insightful," the report added. "He expressed these sentiments in his early admission of guilt and ongoing cooperation in these proceedings, as well as a further apology made directly to the panel: these factors are very much to his credit."

Four of the five matches involved in Davies' ban have been suspended, meaning he is only likely to miss Warwickshire's opening County Championship fixture against Surrey in April. He has two weeks to appeal, but Mark McCafferty, Warwickshire's chair, said the club expected him "to accept his punishment with good grace and focus now on being the best cricketer he can be, as well as working with us to ensure that the club is inclusive to all in every respect".

"We support the decision of the Cricket Disciplinary Committee to issue Alex Davies with a fine and match ban for comments he made on social media a number of years ago, prior to joining Warwickshire CCC," McCafferty added. "There is no excuse for any form of discrimination, regardless of when it took place, and there has to be a real consequence for such actions.

"That said, people need to be given the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and he is extremely apologetic, recognises that what he wrote as a young man was wrong and has since worked hard to improve his attitude to life, as well as support younger players as they transition to being professionals."