Tim Paine’s Test career is all but over

Tim Paine’s Test career is in tatters but that is the least of his concerns as he takes an indefinite break from the game.

Tim Paine playing in Hobart this week Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

Tim Paine, 36, father of two, is a not in a good place.

His Test career is in tatters, but that is the least of his concerns for he has always had a pragmatic view of the blessings the game visited on him long after he’d abandoned hope they would.

On Friday last week he stepped down from the captaincy in an attempt to protect his teammates from the fall out of the scandal.

He could not, however, shield himself and his family from the same.

It is the toll on his personal life that brought him to the decision to prematurely end his cricket career. After a week of going through the motions of a return to the game he has given up and gone home to attend to his family.

His management said he was on “an indefinite mental health break”.

“We are extremely concerned for his and Bonnie’s wellbeing,” the social media message noted with disturbing brevity.

A pragmatic and affable figure, he won his way into the hearts of Tasmanian cricket as a kid. Fair-haired and always mistaken for years younger than his actual age, he was popular at every level of the game and adopted by its wizened custodians.

As captain of the Test team he remained approachable, likeable and engaging. He’d talked recently of retiring to work on morning radio in Hobart and maybe spend his days helping out in some capacity at Cricket Tasmania.

Tim Paine batting in a 2nd XI match in Hobart this week Picture: Eddie Safarik

They were modest expectations when you consider the stature of the job he occupied. Former Australian Test captains can write their own ticket.

In an interview with the Weekend Australian earlier this year it was hard not to note the comfort he found in his surrounds. Wearing shorts in defiance of the bitter cold he ate salad rolls and a bowl of soup at his favourite local bakery.

This has been a wretched business with no winners. The woman who engaged in the sexting episode with Paine is reportedly upset by the publicity the incident has received and the toll it has taken.

The collateral damage is contained but intense.

Cricket Australia’s has suffered in the controversy. First there were accusations of a cover-up surrounding the decision by its integrity officer to clear Paine of any conduct breach when the matter was investigated but not revealed in 2018.

Tim Paine relaxing at his Hobart home last year Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

The investigation concluded it was a private exchange between consenting adults.

The organisation managed to make itself the focus of a distracting board room brawl when former chair David Peever hit back angrily at the way the new acting chair Richard Freudenstein characterised earlier decisions.

Cricket Tasmania were equally upset at the way the situation was represented and struck out fiercely.

The Australian Cricketers Association is dismayed to see the man who was there to help restore cricket’s reputation in its time of need after the sandpaper scandal treated so.

Meanwhile, Paine was trying to pick up the pieces of his game, but he’d started to whisper asides that maybe he’d had enough while playing a second XI’s game this week in front of the biggest media pack such a match had ever attracted.

He got through the four days of that match but could not rouse himself to turn up for work on Friday for a 50 over state game.

His plane ticket to Brisbane on Saturday will go unused, his room at the team hotel will not be needed, the new kit the side has for the Ashes not worn and the last series of his unique career. His 36th Test will not be.

Tim Paine’s last game for Australia passed with the world oblivious to that fact.

Paine was anointed early. He was the youngest every player to be given a Cricket Tasmania contract, his ODI debut was in 2009 and was drafted in to fill Brad Haddin’s place in the first Test of the 2010 series against Pakistan.

He walked out in the Australian cap for the first time – alongside fellow debutant Steve Smith – at Lord’s in 2010 when Ricky Ponting was captain of the national side.

Ricky Ponting captain of Australia presents the Baggy Green Cap to Tim Paine before his debut against Pakistan at Lord’s in 2010 Picture: Getty Images

He scored 92 in his third Test at Mohali against India and a half century in his fourth but it was his keeping which mattered and he proved then he was at least the equal of Haddin.

The incumbent returned and Paine returned to domestic duties with the cricket world assured he would be Australia’s next full-time keeper.

A broken finger while facing Dirk Nannes in a charity match led to years of operations, pain and mental disintegration. He lost his confidence with the bat and his place in the Shield side. In 2017 he accepted a job to leave cricket and work in Melbourne for Kookaburra.

Ponting intervened and new management at Tasmania encouraged him to change his mind and by the end of the year he was walking out as Australia’s keeper for the Ashes – he had not been in Tasmania’s starting XI when the first-class season began.

A glorious return to the game coincided with the dumbest thing he has ever done. A sext exchange with a woman from Hobart went too far. An investigation cleared him but details of the event were leaked to the media recently and the secret that stalked Paine for years was out.

Paine was appointed captain in South Africa in the middle of the sandpaper scandal. Many treated him as the acting skipper. Sponsors didn’t use his face in commercials shot that summer, but as time went on he and Justin Langer proved themselves a good unit.

Together they re-established the reputation of the side.

Still, when the critics gunned for Paine suggesting he was not the best man for the job or it was time to move on he would shrug and say everything to that point had been a bonus and he would be content if it ended at any time.

He would have walked away at the end of these Ashes or earlier.

He did not get to make that decision. Cricket, however, could not matter less to Tim Paine right now.