Former Test captain Mark Taylor has defended the culture surrounding Cricket Australia during his time on the board, saying that discourse surrounding toxicity at the sport’s highest level was overblown.
“I don’t believe there ever was this toxic culture right through Cricket Australia,” Taylor said on Nine’s Sports Sunday.
“I was on the board for 13 or 14 years around that time – I would say the overwhelming majority of people who worked at Cricket Australia are good people, who worked for what they thought was the best interests of cricket in this country, and the cricketers and the people around them in this country, so I don’t subscribe to this.”
It was the first time Taylor had spoken publicly since the news about Tim Paine’s resignation broke on Friday.
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Paine was cleared of any wrongdoing due to the consensual relationship of a string of text messages exchanged with a female co-worker, but stepped aside after the content of those messages was made public.
Taylor resigned from the CA board in 2018, a few months after the Paine incident was dealt with internally. He responded to claims from current CA chair Richard Freudenstein, who yesterday said that his board would have handled the situation differently.
“You don’t have three and a half years of hindsight,” Taylor said.
“You have to make decisions which you believe are in the best interests of all the parties concerned, with the information you have at the time.”
Former netball captain Liz Ellis said she felt the current chair, and CEO Nick Hockley, had passed the buck by saying they would have handled the situation differently had they been in their roles at the time.
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“They knew well
before this has blown up publicly, why wouldn’t he have made the decision then,” she said.
“You can’t say “our board wouldn’t have done it” if they knew, it was months ago.”
Taylor also said he believed that Paine was a different person now than when the texts were sent.
“It’s important to note that he sent them not as the Australian cricket team captain, but as
a guy who played four Test matches at that stage for Australia,” Taylor said.
“He did that way back in 2010, seven years later he is like Lazarus, he comes back from nowhere to be given another chance to play for Australia.”
Paine will remain available for selection as a player for this summer’s Ashes.