"Don't think it's totally fair" - Pat Cummins on Tim Paine saga
Australia's newly-appointed Test captain Pat Cummins said that the whole saga that saw his predecessor Tim Paine step down as skipper was not fair. Paine had stepped down as Australia captain as a 'sexting' scandal from four years ago was about to be made public in the media.
Paine was investigated by Cricket Australia and Cricket Tasmania, who concluded that there had been no breach of the Cricket Australia Code of Conduct. However, with the matter set to be made public, Paine stepped down as Australia captain. He has also made himself unavailable for the Ashes, taking an indefinite break from cricket citing mental health reasons.
Tim Paine has decided to take an indefinite break from all forms of cricket to focus on his mental health.
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Speaking on The Grade Cricketer podcast, Pat Cummins admitted that there is extra pressure on players, especially captains, to maintain a clean record on and off the field. He said the following:
"With the Painy thing, I think what hit home was that a lot of mistakes he made was before he was made captain, which I don’t think is totally fair. We’ve got responsibility and we’re under huge scrutiny here, especially as captain. But I think you have to give people space to grow, to learn, to make mistakes and get better from it."
He added:
"I think it’s a pretty big ask from anyone to never make any mistakes in life and to draw anything up from the past and you’re judging them for who they were 10 years ago instead of who they are now."
Tim Paine saga "rather unfortunate" - Greg Chappell
Former Australia captain Greg Chappell said that the Tim Paine saga was rather unfortunate and that the media reaction was 'over the top'.
Speaking on the podcast, he said about Tim Paine:
"The whole thing is rather unfortunate. I don’t think there are any winners out of something like that. I must admit, I felt like the media reaction was over the top. Tim had been through a couple of hearings and was cleared of any wrongdoings."
Chappell went on to lament the fact that Cricket Australia had not learned from past controversies. Chappell said:
"I would have hoped that we could have learnt from the Mark Waugh and Shane Warne thing with the information to the bookmaker and we could have learned from politics that you can’t bury something and hope that it will go away. It will come out. Better to deal with it at the time and take whatever punishment or whatever is required at the time and move on. Because whenever you try to suppress something, and it comes out later, it looks a lot worse."
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After Paine stepped down, Cummins was named captain while Steve Smith returned to leadership duties with the vice-captain role.