For­mer West In­dies bats­man Phi­lo Wal­lace is up­set at the pun­ish­ment hand­ed down to fast bowler Shan­non Gabriel and thinks that nowhere in the con­ver­sa­tion be­tween Eng­land cap­tain Joe Root and the big fast bowler, did he ever say that he had a prob­lem with some­one be­ing gay.

“All Shan­non did was to ask a ques­tion, he was not in­di­cat­ing a like or dis­like for the gay com­mu­ni­ty. All he did was to ask a ques­tion. This is a mat­ter of in­ter­pre­ta­tion but match ref­er­ee Jeff Crowe de­cid­ed to throw the book at the play­er.

“Things like these, have all to do with in­ter­pre­ta­tion and Crowe, rather than look­ing at every­thing, is hell-bent on­go­ing by the books. This is a sad sit­u­a­tion for Gabriel and I feel for him.

Wal­lace said that Gabriel who was hand­ed a four-match ODI ban as a re­sult of ob­tain­ing eight de­mer­it points over two years, was the big­ger man in the sit­u­a­tion and ac­cept­ed what was hand­ed down by the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) but it was not fair. Gabriel was al­so fined 75 per cent of his US$5,000 match fee.

Wal­lace was al­so not hap­py with the be­hav­iour of Eng­land cap­tain Joe Root. “Ob­vi­ous­ly he set the man up. This was very sneaky be­cause he walked to the stumps and then made his com­ment. This is pure mis­chief and all of a sud­den Root is hailed a hero by those groups in Eng­land.”

Wal­lace re­mem­bered that while play­ing for the Windies he en­coun­tered sim­i­lar prob­lems but un­der­stood that it was all ban­ter on the field of play and treat­ed it like that. I re­mem­ber play­ing for the West In­dies at the Gab­ba and an Aus­tralian fast bowler told me ‘why the hell you don’t go back on the ba­nana boat’. I went down to Dessie Haynes on the oth­er end and told him that I don’t know what he talk­ing about be­cause I came on a Qan­tas Flight and we left it at that.”

Gabriel in his apol­o­gy said: “I rec­og­nize now that I was at­tempt­ing to break through my own ten­sion when I said to Joe Root: ‘Why are you smil­ing at me? Do you like boys?’

“His re­sponse, which was picked up by the mi­cro­phone, was: ‘Don’t use it as an in­sult. There’s noth­ing wrong with be­ing gay.’ I then re­spond­ed: ‘I have no is­sues with that, but you should stop smil­ing at me.

“To my team­mates and mem­bers of the Eng­land team, es­pe­cial­ly their cap­tain Joe Root, I ex­tend an un­re­served apol­o­gy for a com­ment which in the con­text of on-the-field ri­val­ry, I as­sumed was in­of­fen­sive pi­cong and sport­ing ban­ter. I know now that it was of­fen­sive and for that, I am deeply sor­ry.”

Gabriel added that he had since spo­ken to Root about the in­ci­dent, and the two have moved past it: “Joe Root and I have since spo­ken and I am com­fort­ed by the fact that there are no hard feel­ings be­tween us.”

Gabriel was found guilty of breach­ing ar­ti­cle 2.13 of the ICC code of con­duct which re­lates to “per­son­al abuse of a play­er, play­er sup­port per­son­nel, um­pire or match ref­er­ee dur­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al match”, fol­low­ing an in­ci­dent with Root.

The in­ci­dent took place on Mon­day, the third day of the third Test at the Dar­ren Sam­my In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Ground in St Lu­cia.