It’s often said that the captaincy of the Australian men’s cricket team is the 2nd most important position after the prime minister, so there’s ongoing interest in the dumping of Test captain Tim Paine late last year. His new autobiography – The Price Paid – has been released, and he’s claimed that Cricket Australia abandoned him when the sort of text messages sent between people who love each other very much were exchanged with a Cricket Tasmania staffer were made public last year. An internal investigation in 2018 cleared him of any wrongdoing, and Paine says his employer “made it look like they thought I’d sexually harassed someone”. He blames a “PR consultant” for steering Cricket Australia in that direction, and yesterday that man was unmasked… It was Clive Mathieson, the well-regarded former editor of The Australian, former chief of staff to PM Malcolm Turnbull, and current crisis comms expert. Cricket Australia isn’t much interested in offering its side of the story…