Tim Paine scandal: Key questions around Test side linger after brutal end

Australian cricket turned to Tim Paine at a time of crisis and he departs amid similar drama. Robert Craddock reflects on whether Paine’s misdemeanours have undone his good work as skipper.

A brutal start. An even more brutal ending.

Tim Paine’s captaincy journey started in the wake of other people’s tears and ended with his own.

Paine’s ride as Australian captain was a story like no other, chosen mid-Test during the ball tampering affair and signing off with a lightning bolt press conference which shocked the country on a sleepy Friday afternoon, when he should have been getting ready to play club cricket the next day.

Sadly, the first and last days of his captaincy career will become more famous than anything that happened between them.

Tim Paine’s captaincy came to a brutal end. Picture: AFP

Paine has made a quick exit from the leadership but key questions linger.

Given the push in cricket for the respect for women will Paine be chosen as a player only at age 36 at the Gabba against England, or will Alex Carey be called in out of the Australia A squad?

The selectors reportedly want Paine to play but this is such an extraordinary event nothing is off the table, particularly when you consider what his mindset might be.

This is a blow for cricket because Paine was the key man in the cultural clean-up after the affair.

So what to make of Australia’s 46th Test captain?

If you take out the unfortunate ending – which you can’t – it was an effort worthy of decent praise.

As a player and a leader, Paine was always better than people thought he was.

At his best, Paine’s keeping over the stumps could be mentioned in the same breath as Ian Healy and his Test batting average of 32.6 is a solid pass mark in a world where you have to accept Adam Gilchrist floated in a different universe.

Paine was most valuable to Australia in the first summer after Sandpapergate when Australia lost to India.

The Australian team that summer was in a state of well-hidden turmoil.

Coaches were fighting with each other. Some players liked some coaches and loathed others. Tempers were fraying. Lids were popping off saucepans.

The one cool head was Paine. He didn’t win the series but Australia would have been lost without him.

And that was despite the fact he was still in a state of disbelief at having been handed the Test captaincy in the middle of a Test match.

“Sometimes I am driving around Hobart and hear a news bulletin and they say “Australian captain Tim Paine said today‘ and I just start laughing,’’ Paine said.

Any rating of Paine as a captain must be made in the context that Australia had thought for more than a century that keeping and captaincy generally don’t go together because of their taxing burdens.

That’s why only four other keepers apart from Paine (Jack Blackham, Billy Murdoch, Barry Jarman and Adam Gilchrist) have led Australia in Tests.

To shoulder the two roles as well as he did at an age when many of his ilk had retired was a fine effort.

It’s true his captaincy had its blemishes. In Sydney last summer against India he had a mini-meltdown and his “wait until we get you at the Gabba’’ comment aged poorly.

Paine will rue to his last breath a decision to send England into bat in the last Test at the Oval of the 2019 Ashes when batting first seemed the right call but his rallying, pitch perfect dressing room speech after Ben Stokes stole the Headingley Test was perhaps his finest moment.

Temperamentally sound and respected by his players, Paine was a strong, calm, confident leader when Australia needed one until his unfortunate exit.

Originally published as Tim Paine scandal: Key questions around Test side linger after brutal end