Moeen Ali said Jofra Archer has received some ‘horrendous’ messages over the last week. (Reuters)
England’s current ODI vice-captain Moeen Ali said that the hate Jofra Archer has received on social media over the last two weeks has been horrendous and that some kind of monitoring is required so that anonymous accounts are stopped from spouting such hatred.
Writing a column in The Guardian on Wednesday, Moeen Ali said: “He (Jofra Archer) is a very active person on social media and while I personally moved away from it a while back, I would never tell anyone to do the same. But it has to be said, I have seen some of the messages he has received and they are absolutely horrendous.”
Archer came under an unexpected storm last week after he was left out from the 2nd Test vs West Indies and fined for having left the bio-secure bubble the teams were being kept in and gone home for a break.
Known as one of the most entertaining Twitter accounts normally, Archer has sent out a few cryptic tweets over the last few days.
He also gave rebuttals to some negative comments from users. When an user told him to “not bring racism into everything”, he replied: “Come back when you can use your real name and real display picture.”
When another user said he should stop “rubbish” on social media when on England duty, he responded: “Maybe you should unfollow me then.”
Moeen Ali, writing in his column, said that while Archer has taken the criticism as well as can be, said that social media needs to have some sort of accountability.
Calling Archer a ‘potential superstar’ and a ‘fast learner’, he said: “This isn’t about being thick-skinned. No one should have to tolerate racism. And I think people need calling out here. Maybe they should make it mandatory that social media accounts have names and faces on them. We should know who is saying these things.”
Moeen Ali himself had been at the centre of a racism controversy a few years ago, when he had revealed that an unidentified Australian cricketer had called him ‘Osama’ during the 2015 Ashes. He had then decided against pressing charges against the player.