Tim Paine revels in his winter exile

Tim Paine found the World Championship Final too hard to watch knowing the circumstances that cost Australia its place in the decider.

Australian Test Cricket captain Tim Paine with wife Bonnie Paine and kids Milla, 2 and Charlie, 18 months will be isolating at home this Easter. Picture: Zak Simmonds

It’s barely 6C in Hobart at 7.30am, two day after the winter solstice. A timid sun is struggling to get out of bed, but Tim Paine, the Australian captain in waiting, has been roaming the cold streets in shorts, just as he has done since his earliest days at the local school in Lauderdale.

Bare legs in winter is apparently a matter of honour in these parts. It’s fresh, not cold, he says.

By midday he’s holed up, as he often is, in a corner of the Sandy Bay Bakery where they don’t even have to ask for his order: bowl of soup and a salad roll. Locals and the cold coming in through the open door.

This bakery with its eclairs, pies and raisin scones is so old school it feels like the 1970s are still upon us.

Kayo is throwing open the doors to an epic amount of free live sport & shows on Kayo Freebies this June. No Credit Card. No-brainer. Register Free Now >

Cars hurtle round the bend at the Sandy Bay Road shopping centre and people wander about their business, nobody stops Paine for a selfie or autograph and only one kid from the primary school stops to gawk, but he’s so young it is doubtful he knows who he pulling faces at on the other side of the glass.

The kid’s in short pants too.

This, in case I haven’t trowelled it on thick enough, is a long way from the mainland, friends. Paine doesn’t mind the single origin coffee shops that have sprung up in all our CBDs, but when you can get a good bowl of soup with a roll and butter for $5 …

Up on the big island half the team has retreated home from bubble fatigue, but Paine, who only plays Test matches, is in danger of forgetting where the airport is.

The Australian Test team has played just four matches in the past 18 months. When you’re about to turn 37 and you’re watching the twilight years of your Test career pass by without a game it’s got to be frustrating, doesn’t it?

“I’m loving it,” he says.

Really?

“Absolutely, it’s very rare for me in the last four years to have a break this big. I’m actually enjoying it. Of course I miss playing cricket, but I was about to retire and have kids and go into a different stage of life and then suddenly I’m back in the team, appointed captain and so the four years I have had kids I’ve been away.”

Paine had planned to raise the kids while working in Melbourne for Kookaburra where he’d been offered a modest wage, a mobile phone and some security. He may have still got to wear shorts and drink soup, but there wouldn’t have been that nice car parked outside, or the nice new home up the road — all of which are just the bonuses that come with your Test dream being fulfilled.

“It’s nice to be home and have a pretty normal life,” the skipper says. “The flip side is I want to be playing as much cricket as I can at my age because I’m closer to the end, but the positives of the situation outweigh the negatives.

“I’ve got a two-year-old and a four-year-old that I’ve spent very little time with so it has been nice in that regard.

“I was pretty chilled about the (absence of) cricket up to this week when the World Test Championship started. I tried to sit down the first night and watch it, but I texted JL and said ‘I cannot watch this, I just cannot watch it’ (later, he admits he found the courage).

“We missed out on the final because of over rates in a game that finished on day four, in an innings in which we bowled 16 overs. We had a day and a half to go and we bowled 16 overs. We were two overs behind and we had the best off spinner of all time who – if the innings had gone longer – would have had us in front of the over rate by the 35th over.

“India only needed 70 to win but it was still a Test match and I wasn’t going to take the piss and open with a spinner in those circumstances, you have to respect the game to some degree. If we were in India maybe, but in Australia you want to open with your quicks and hopefully take some quick wickets.”

He could go on. He does. If it didn’t hurt I guess you’d be concerned.

It doesn’t help either that Australia was on top of the points table at that time and had gained a few of those points with a comprehensive 3-0 victory of New Zealand the year before, winning the first game by 296 runs, the second by 247 and the third by 279.

Tim Paine exchanges words with Ravi Ashwin at the SCG Picture: AFP

That aside, Paine’s been using the time well. He and his wife Bonnie have been among the crowds at Dark Mofo and putting in good time with the kids. Getting down to the beach shack, doing the gardening, living the life of a Hobartian.

He gets up early because he’s focused on his fitness.

“At my age I find it harder and harder to combine getting the right amount of skill work with batting and keeping, and the right amount of fitness work so at the moment I just concentrate on getting fit and in a month’s time when the Tasmanian pre-season starts I’ll start working on my skills,” he said.

Over rates weren’t the only clanger in Australia’s Test summer past and the distance has given Paine, the players and the coaches time to review what went wrong and what needs to be addressed.

“Last year was a difficult year for everybody in the world, it was new to us as players and there were bits of it that we didn’t handle well and we let it affect the way we played,” he said.

“If you look at all sports, good teams who won AFL premierships, NRL premierships, are the teams that got on with what’s in front of them. At times last summer we got distracted by things that didn’t matter or were out of our control and that was a factor in big moments.”

Paine admits there were times he didn’t control himself as well as he would have liked and nominates an exchange with umpire Paul Wilson and another with Ravi Ashwin at the SCG.

“I let things get under my skin and I haven’t let that happen since I was a very young player,” he said. “You’re never too old to make mistakes, I guess, or to learn from them.

“I need to continue to be consistent and to be level.”

Australia's captain Tim Paine after dropping a catch during the third Test against India at the SCG Picture: AFP

Paine says that three dropped catches on the final day in Sydney were, on reflection, a sign.

“Off field we were distracted as a team and those dropped catches show that at times on the field I was caught up in thinking about tactics and bowling changes and I wasn’t concentrating in that split second on my main job which is being a wicket keeper.

“I was in good positions, but my mind was not.”

He says that he will look to structure things differently on the field around filtering advice from the senior players so there aren’t so many voices.

One element he has settled on is that Marnus Labuschagne is now in charge of over rates.

“I can’t be choosing bowlers, setting fields and doing my job and then getting on everyone’s back about over rates,” he said. “At times last year I think I tried to do too much and you saw that spill over in Sydney.”

Paine has another take out from 2020-21.

“I want to just try and enjoy it a bit more,” he said. “Last year it got a bit, ummm, a bit serious. I let it get a bit serious. It is a serious business, but I felt tense and I felt anxious.

“It was a big series with a big build up and a lot of scrutiny but in previous years, around the Ashes, I’ve been able to enjoy that, but last year I got caught up in it.

“Maybe the difference was we couldn’t escape, couldn’t get out of the hotels or away from the cricket and if that happens again this summer I have to find a way to escape from it even if we are in biosecurity.”

One last thing. Retirement on the cards Mr Paine?

“I’ve been asked that since I came into the team at 33 and as I said then I am looking no further than the next series. I am looking to play a role, I’m absolutely convinced my batting is getting better, I know I’m a bloody good wicket keeper when I am in the right space mentally and I am still confident I can do a good job.”