Tim Paine has made a stunning revelation in his autobiography about how he was removed as the test captain of Australia. As it was officially made out at that time, Paine had stepped down voluntarily after his name surfaced in a sexting scandal, but the veteran wicketkeeper-batsman has now written in his autobiography that it was not a voluntary resignation.
According to Tim Paine, right before the start of the Ashes series last year, he got a “strange” phone call that was attended by him, his manager, the Cricket Australia CEO, and a PR consultant whom he didn’t even know. Paine further wrote that the PR consultant was the one who was doing all the talking in the call and not the Cricket Australia CEO who would have, otherwise, been supposed to take the lead in the conversation.
The PR consultant told Paine that the sexting scandal was out in the media and if he stayed on as Australian test captain, it would become a big controversy. So, to “take the air out of it”, he should resign from test captaincy.
Nobody had discussed captaincy with me before that call: Tim Paine
In Paine’s own words, he was shocked to hear that, because a change of captaincy was never discussed with him before, not by the CEO and not even by the selectors at any point. To hear a PR consultant asking him to resign as test captain for a sexting scandal which was 3 years old, was already investigated by Cricket Australia and he was even given a clean chit for that, it was hard to believe.
Poor old Tim Paine …. Still doesn’t get it……..
— David 🎀 🌺 🎗💙💛💙💛 (@david89293299) October 25, 2022
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Tim Paine wrote that during the phone call, he also felt as if the Cricket Australia CEO was in support of whatever the PR consultant was saying even though the CEO knew Paine had already been cleared in that scandal. The 37-year-old wrote it appeared to him that CA had almost kept a gun to his head and was asking for resignation through that PR consultant. If he hadn’t resigned, he would have been sacked.
