Cricket Australia Chair Richard Freudenstein says in the light of the Tim Paine scandal, the organisation should be proud of its horrible, but strong culture.
“Every sporting organisation dreams about creating a strong culture, and no culture is stronger than the Australian Cricket Team’s.”
“It’s withstood scandals, millions of dollars on cultural reviews, fancy pamphlets with stock images of people smiling in an office and repeated commitments by numerous boards to change it.”
Mr Freudenstein said if anything, the Australian Cricket team’s culture is getting stronger.
“When the Shane Warne and Mark Waugh scandal regarding taking money from a bookmaker happened, we only managed to cover that up for three years. This one was four years, so that’s continuous improvement.”
Mr Freudenstein said not telling the public about the incident when it happened would not have respected the privacy of someone who sent dick pics.
“I mean, if anything, appointing a captain to fix the culture, when we knew he had a sexting scandal on the books, just shows how committed we are to protecting our bad culture.”
When asked if Cricket Australia would now look to tackle their culture in a meaningful way, Mr Freudenstein laughed before saying “Oh, you’re serious.”
“Look, we’ve had players suspended for taking a prohibited substance, we’ve had ball-tampering and lying about it afterwards, others have taken money from a bookie, why one of our ex-players even shot an elephant!”
“Outside of Federal Parliament, we have the strongest culture in Australia. The people doing the cultural reviews may change but the culture does not.”
COMMENTS
Gavin Grimm
Nov 19, 2021
As usual, very witty and ultimately very correct. There is much truth in humour, lord knows that is how I get by on a daily basis.
Paine is not the best keeper in Australia presently, noting that keeping doesn’t involve just stopping the ball from reaching the boundary after being bowled anymore, so he shouldn’t be playing full stop. Having said that, are there any other keepers in Aust who have a whiff of scandal about them ? I am sure I saw Carey talking to a female that wasn’t his partner once, so maybe him ?
Doug in the republic of westralia
Nov 19, 2021
So... who would have thought sending a photo of your gentleman's parts to a lady who is not your wife would cause so much trouble?
Seriously we must give credit to the true hero's of this moment.
The CA spin doctors and those who did the review to 'clear' him of any wrongdoing.
This has got to be a world class cover up given that CA must of known or at least heard of this incident when he was appointed as captain. To keep this one swept under the carpet for four years is truly impressive.
The Mancheezle
Dec 02, 2021
Australian cricket has really had a good go at all the available scandal types really haven't they? Drugs? Tick. Cheating? Tick. Betting? Tick. Sexy times? Tick.
The only thing stopping a Cricket Australia racism scandal is their steadfast historical blockades to brown skinned players. In hindsight it really is lucky they didn't let a couple through. Imagine. If they had have heard. The Things
SHEMP
Mar 17, 2022
*Cricket Australia..their steadfast historical blockades to brown skinned players*
You can add to that a relcutance to take on players whose surnames contain lots of vowels and silent letters. O'Shaugnessy would be a possible exception, though.