Southampton, Jul 13 (IANS): England cricketer Jofra Archer has said that the arrest of a 12-year-old boy for sending racist messages to Crystal Palace forward Wilfried Zaha will hopefully deter the keyboard warriors.

Before Sunday's game, Zaha had shared the screenshots of the messages of the Twitter handle and captioned it, "Woke up to this." The message apparently looked from an Aston Villa fan who threatened to visit Zaha "as a ghost" if he scores against the Birmingham-based premier league club.

West Midlands Police tweeted the 27-year-old Ivory Coast winger to say they would look into the abuse and hours later confirmed an arrest.

"We were alerted to a series of racist messages sent to a footballer today and after looking into them and conducting checks, we have arrested a boy," read a WM Police tweet.

"The 12-year-old from Solihull has been taken to custody. Thanks to everyone who raised it. Racism won't be tolerated," it added.

Archer, who was part of the Southampton Test which England lost against the West Indies, shared the news and hoped that the arrest would restrain the "keyboard warriors" from racially abusing anyone in future. "Hopefully this will deter the keyboard warriors," said the England pacer.

Archer, himself in the past, has been subjected to racial abuse on social media and had also shared the screenshots of the abuses he received on Instagram.

It should be noted that players in the English Premier League have been kneeling in support of the 'Black Lives Matter' movement before every match since the season restarted in June.