Tim Paine breaks silence on brutal exit as Australian Test cricket captain in new book

Tim Paine has laid into CA boss Nick Hockley over the controversial end to his Test captaincy, and the mysterious man who was at the centre of his exit.

Tim Paine has claimed he was effectively sacked from the Test captaincy by a PR consultant, slamming Cricket Australia chief executive Nick Hockley for not having the “courage” to do it himself.

Paine ultimately chose to step down as Australian skipper in the face of a sexting scandal last November, but only because he felt CA’s bosses had “held a gun to my head.”

In a revealing new book, The Price Paid, Paine opens up on his deep personal shame for his actions, but admits he felt hung out to dry by a CA board that years earlier had cleared his exchange with a female Tasmanian cricket employee as “consensual”, only to backflip on their support for him once the story was set to go public.

Paine is scathing on Hockley and CA executives for abandoning him and particularly for leaving it to a consultant outside the organisation to tell him he should walk the plank.

“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,” writes Paine.

“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. 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.

A tearful Tim Paine steps down as Australian Test captain last November. Picture: Chris Kidd

“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 (Paine’s manager, James Henderson).

“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. 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.

Tim Paine has been critical of Cricket Australia CEO Nick Hockley. Picture: AFP

“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.”

Paine got off the phone call and instantly realised he would be sacked if he didn’t resign.

“They’d held a gun to my head. I couldn’t go on without their support,” writes Paine in the book ghosted by The Australian cricket writer, Peter Lalor.

Paine opens the book by declaring he took full responsibility for his selfish indiscretion and does not want anyone’s sympathy; detailing the self-loathing that engrossed him and tore apart his family in the months’ following the scandal.

Former captain Tim Paine and his wife, Bonnie. Picture: Instagram

Tim Paine said the scandal took a toll on his family. Picture: Instagram

However, Paine feels he was betrayed by Cricket Australia and claims they contributed to an insinuation he had sexually harassed the woman, despite CA’s own integrity unit investigation in 2017 ruling it was a consensual text exchange.

“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,” Paine writes.

“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.

“There was a feeling that if I didn’t stand down, they’d stand me down.

“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.”