James Sutherland's late intervention was both the catalyst for peace and perhaps the greatest bugbear in Australia's bitter cricket pay dispute.
The Cricket Australia (CA) chief executive on Thursday declared it was not the time for post-mortems after finally reaching in-principle agreement with the Australian Cricketers' Association on a landmark pay deal.
Sutherland's decision to take a largely hands-off approach during months of bitter negotiations left many players frustrated and is likely to have contributed to a loss of trust between the warring parties.
This was nothing new for Sutherland, who had delegated responsibility during the early stages of previous negotiations.
But with ACA counterpart Alastair Nicholson on Thursday describing Sutherland's involvement as "critical" to the deal being finalised, the CA chief may come to regret not coming to the table sooner.
"It's probably not a time for post-mortems, or to reflect too much on that," Sutherland said.
"In time, we'll reflect a little bit on that, including my involvement.
"But I think we're very happy to be up here, relieved and happy, and looking forward to getting cricket back played in different parts of the country."
The long-anticipated deal ensures this month's Test tour of Bangladesh, October's limited-overs tour of India and the summer Ashes series will proceed as planned.
But it was too late to prevent the boycotting of an Australia A tour of South Africa last month which would have allowed Usman Khawaja and Glenn Maxwell to audition for spots in the Test side.
With former skipper Michael Clarke recently describing the pay dispute as "horrible" for the game, Nicholson said it wouldn't be easy to fix the damaged relationship between players and administrators.
"Is it repaired? I think that will take some time," he said.
"But that's something we'll now work through together for the good of the game."
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