Tim Paine stepped down as captain of Australia’s test cricket team on Friday, distraught and in tears, following reports that he had been probed and cleared for sending sexually explicit text messages to a female colleague, four years ago.
Three weeks before the first test in Brisbane, the incident threw Australia’s Ashes preparations into chaos, putting the 36-year-old wicketkeeper’s international future at risk.
Paine said that he had been examined by the sport’s national integrity unit regarding communications he made to a former Cricket Tasmania staffer in 2017, a few months before he took over the captaincy.
Despite being absolved of wrongdoing, the husband and father of three admitted that his actions did not meet the standards of an Australian cricket captain or the general public.
Australia’s previous two captains’ tenures have now been book-ended by scandal, with Paine replacing Steve Smith in the aftermath of the Newlands ball-tampering scandal in 2018.
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