Tim Paine continues to claim no wrongdoing on his part in the controversial sexting scandal, stating his messages to a Tasmanian co-worker were consensual. The former skipper also believes it was a matter in which Cricket Australia threw him under the bus.
The matter relates to back and forth between Paine and a Cricket Tasmania receptionist lady, with two indulging in sexually explicit messages to each other four years ago. Coincidentally, 2018 was the time when Paine was appointed Test captain in the aftermath of Steve Smith’s sacking following the ball-tampering incident in Cape Town.
When the matter came to public light last year ahead of the Ashes during the Australian summer, forcing Paine to take an indefinite mental health break from the game and also effectively quit captaincy, CA had clarified that the Tasmanian had been appointed at the helm only after clearance from an internal enquiry.
Now in his autobiography titled, ‘The Price Paid’, Paine has claimed innocence in the matter and wrote that CA made it look like he had sexually harassed the woman concerned when his messages to her were of their consensual understanding.
“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 so too,”
he writes in the book.
“The reality was they were happy to defend me and accept I hadn’t breached their code of conduct as long as it was kept private. If the story hadn’t run, I would still be captain and if Cricket Australia had handled it like they said they would I would still be playing for Australia.”
To this day, it hasn’t been clear why CA didn’t come up with the statement until it became imminent that the woman concerned will reveal her backdated conversation with Paine.
Paine, who at the point of quitting captaincy and taking a break, apologised to the fans and his family, including his wife, for his misconduct, thinks the cricket board failed to stop the matter from going public. He revealed in his book the appointment of a PR agency by CA to consult his case, something that made him realise that the board will abandon him.
“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. He said that he’d been in the newspaper game for many years and this was going to be huge and would not go away,”
Paine writes in his book.
“I found it very strange that this person, someone I’d never met and someone who did not work at Cricket Australia, took the lead in the call while Nick, the chief executive, took a back seat.”
In the book, Paine has also highlighted his conversations with CA chief executive Nick Hockley, a figure of prominence that he claims never trusted him in the issue and made it come across as if he was guilty of harassing the co-worker. The conflict between the two individuals meant CA let the PR agency consultants operate the matter, something Paine found disappointing.
The revelation of explicit messages and Paine’s departure from the scene led to the appointment of spearhead Pat Cummins as full-time Test captain of the side before Australia hammered England 4-0 over the last home summer.
