Tim Paine in his autobiography; I was disappointed by Cricket Australia



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Tim Paine in his autobiography; I was disappointed by Cricket Australia

Tim Paine is angry with Cricket Australia for what he believes to be a failure by a CA and manager to stop the publication of a story about explicit text messages between him and a Cricket Tasmania employee. There was no support.

This led to his resignation as the team captain "We did a phone link which included this person they'd hired from a public relations firm who'd apparently given advice to the board in the past," Paine wrote in his book, as quoted by cricbuzz.com "The consultant then said that the best way to get ahead of the story was if I stood down as captain.

I was stunned by that, so was James. Who was this guy? What did he know about the circumstances? That was the first time anyone had mentioned me resigning as captain. There was no way I was doing that," he added. CA chief executive Nick Hockle did not give him the support he needed.

"I knew what had happened. Cricket Australia knew what had happened and in my mind this guy didn't know, or worse than that, it was like he believed that I had sexually harassed her. "Then Nick chimed in, saying how experienced this guy was and how he thought I should listen to his advice.

I said, 'Do you want me to resign as Test captain, Nick? He couldn't give me a straight answer, or wouldn't. He kept talking around in circles. "And this guy said, 'If you resign as Test captain it will take the air out of it but if you stay on they are going to keep coming at you.'

I think he said I wouldn't last until Monday and I replied that I would if they backed me in. "I said to Nick, 'You and the board know what's happened, you have an integrity report that clears me of any wrongdoing to anybody and that it was a personal matter.

It was becoming obvious what Cricket Australia wanted me to do but they didn't have the courage to say it themselves, they were letting their hired consultant run the show. They'd held a gun to my head. I couldn't go on without their support."

Cricket Australia

He was disappointed in Cricket Australia, and he could not have expected that they would react like that.

"I felt they were driven by the need to protect their image, they'd got in someone to look after them and he'd decided that I had to be sacrificed to save them, they were hanging me out to dry. The board had met that night and it was clear to me that they wanted to cut and run.

I think that's why they got Nick and the consultant to call me. "I was disappointed and I was tired of this. I was prepared to cop the flak for what I did, but in my mind Cricket Australia had abandoned me and made it look like they thought I'd sexually harassed someone and so everyone else would think that too.

I felt like them flipping almost vindicated the story. "The thing that got me later was when Cricket Australia said they would have handled it differently to the way it was done back in 2017, but for that seven days or whatever it was, they were doing their level best to stop the story coming out. When it got out, they seemed to change their tune about it."