Tim Paine’s brother, Nick, has described watching the fifth Ashes test wrap up without the former national cricket captain and Hobart-local on the field as “gut-wrenching”.
Key points:
- Tim Paine took over from Steve Smith as captain of the Australian cricket team after the 2018 ball-tampering scandal in South Africa
- Paine later stood down as captain after it emerged he had sent explicit text messages to a female Cricket Tasmania employee in 2017
- Nick Paine says his brother should have been allowed to play at Hobart’s historic Ashes test
As celebrations began at Bellerive Oval last night, after Australia’s men’s team completed a 4-0 rout of England, Nick Paine took a swipe at Cricket Australia over his brother’s treatment.
“Pretty hard to watch this knowing full well that one of the key people in resurrecting the reputation of Cricket Australia and this team was shafted by that very same organisation because of a personal mistake he made nearly four years ago,” he wrote, on Twitter as “china paine”.
“It’s just a real shame that one mistake in life — that the person was cleared and exonerated by an inquiry — can end a kid’s dream but then, for others who make them, they come back and it’s all OK and in a way forgotten,” Nick Paine wrote.
“Double standards from an organisation that clearly doesn’t have the back of its people.”
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Tim Paine stood down as captain of the Australian men’s team back in November after it emerged he had sent explicit text messages to a female Cricket Tasmania employee in 2017.
An investigation into the incident by Cricket Australia the following year cleared Paine of a code of conduct breach — the same year he was appointed captain of the team after the sandpaper scandal in South Africa.
However, a few days after the sexting scandal broke in November last year, Cricket Australia Chair Richard Freudenstein said the organisation had mishandled that investigation.
“[All] I can say is that, faced with the same circumstances, and with the benefit of all relevant information about this matter, Cricket Australia would not make the same decisions today,” Freudenstein said in November.
“I acknowledge that the decision clearly sent the wrong message to the sport, to the community and to Tim: that this kind of behaviour is acceptable and without serious consequences.”
Following these comments from Cricket Australia — and an unsuccessful return to second-grade state cricket after neck surgery — the now 37-year-old Paine announced he would take leave from the game “for the foreseeable future”.
Two weeks later, Paine’s home ground of Bellerive Oval was announced as the replacement venue for the fifth Ashes test, after Perth was ruled out due to its strict COVID-19 protocols.
If selected to play, it would have meant Paine’s likely last test would have been the historic first Ashes contest to be played in Hobart.
Cricket Tasmania’s chair, Andrew Gaggin, was scathing of Cricket Australia’s treatment of the former skipper at the time, and his comments echo the sentiments expressed by the former captain’s brother.
“Tim Paine has been a beacon for Australian cricket over the past four years and instrumental in salvaging the reputation of the national team after the calamity of Cape Town,” Gaggin wrote in a statement.
“Yet, at a time when CA should have supported Tim, he was evidently regarded as dispensable.
“The treatment afforded to the Australian Test captain by Cricket Australia has been appalling, and the worst since Bill Lawry [more than] 50 years ago,” Mr Gaggin said.
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