Liz Ellis was strong in her criticism. Photo / Channel 9
Liz Ellis was strong in her criticism. Photo / Channel 9
Aussie netball legend Liz Ellis has savaged Cricket Australia and the way the sporting body has attempted to deal with former captain Tim Paine's bombshell resignation.
The wicketkeeper quit his role as captain of the Australian Test cricket team on Friday, brought down by a series of lewd texts he'd sent to a former Cricket Tasmania employee.
The Herald Sun was first to reveal Paine had sent the woman a "d*** pic", among other sexually charged messages, on the eve of the 2017/18 Ashes series.
Subsequently, in an emotional statement to the media on Friday afternoon, Paine stood aside as captain.
The saga took another dramatic turn on Saturday when Cricket Australia (CA) chairman Richard Freudenstein admitted the organisation made a mistake to not disclose Paine's sexting scandal earlier, having investigated the matter in 2018.
He said Paine would not have been elevated to the captaincy within Australian cricket's current culture.
Freudenstein's comments piled the blame on the previous Cricket Australia board of directors in 2018 when the sport was led by chief executive James Sutherland and former chairman David Peever. Ex-Test captain Mark Taylor was also a board member at the time.
It emerged in Saturday's Zoom press conference involving Freudenstein and CA chief executive Nick Hockley that both had been aware of Paine's sexting scandal when they were appointed to their positions at the top of the organisation.
Tim Paine stepped down from his role as captain of the Australian Test cricket team on Friday. Photo / Getty Images
Ellis slammed the damning contradiction in the comments made by Freudenstein when she addressed the scandal on Nine's Sports Sunday.
"It's worthwhile pointing out, I feel like Richard Freudenstein has just passed the buck as well because he's saying, 'My board wouldn't have done this'. But he got briefed when he came on board as chair, Nick Hockley got briefed about this," Ellis said.
"So they knew well before any of this has blown up publicly.
"Why didn't he make the decision then? You can't say, 'Our board wouldn't have done it' if you didn't make the decision when you knew about it, which was months ago."
'A terrible example of victim blaming'
A Cricket Tasmania investigation found Paine had not committed a breach of the organisation's code of conduct, while CA's Integrity Unit investigation also cleared Paine of a code of conduct breach.
In a statement on Friday, Cricket Tasmania's first line said: "The allegations raised against Tim Paine by a former Cricket Tasmania employee were only brought to the attention of Cricket Tasmania when formal charges of theft were laid against that employee in mid-2018."
They added "the interaction was consensual, private, occurred on the one occasion only, was between mature adults and was not repeated".
Freudenstein originally said in a statement CA "does not condone this type of language or behaviour". However, CA, Cricket Tasmania and the Australian Cricketers' Association all described the text exchange between Paine and his former Cricket Tasmania colleague as "consensual".
Ellis said the woman involved in the text exchange with Paine had been discredited as Taylor — a CA director in 2018 when an investigation into the matter was conducted — also described the exchange as "consensual" while sitting alongside Ellis as a fellow panellist on Sports Sunday.
"It's worthwhile putting some context around that as well Mark, in that there's talk about it was consensual at the time but there was later a workplace complaint made," Ellis said.
"I think we need to keep that in mind as well, that the person at the other end of the text messages did eventually make a complaint.
"I was disappointed to see Cricket Tasmania in the first line of their statement really try and discredit the woman involved. That was a terrible example of victim-blaming and they probably need to have a long hard look at themselves."
