In his recently-released autobiography, The Price Paid, Paine addressed the events that led to him standing down after CA and his manager, James Henderson, failed to stop the publication of the story around his explicit text-message exchange with a female employee of Cricket Tasmania, dating back to 2017. At the time, the board's integrity unit had cleared Paine of any breach of code of conduct, concluding the exchange to be consensual. However, the former captain has revealed how during a 'strange' telephonic meeting with the then CA chief executive Nick Hockley and an unnamed PR consultant from outside of the organisation, it was evident that he didn't have the board's backing to continue in the top job once the story got out.