Chris Lewis, the England Test cricketer once hailed as heir to Ian Botham, was on Tuesday charged with illegally importing cocaine with an estimated street value of £200 000 and remanded in custody.
The 40-year-old and a 26-year-old professional basketball player, Chad Kirnon, were arrested after arriving in the United Kingdom on a Virgin Atlantic flight from St Lucia.
Tins of fruit containing liquid cocaine were allegedly found during a routine baggage check at Gatwick airport. According to a UK Border Agency spokesperson, the cocaine, weighing nearly 4kg, was discovered after the tins were x-rayed.
Kirnon and Lewis made a brief appearance on Tuesday before Crawley magistrates, where a bail application on behalf of Lewis was refused. The pair, both of north London, were remanded in custody to appear via video-link before Haywards Heath magistrates next Wednesday. Lewis, from Georgetown, Guyana, played for England in 32 Tests and 53 one-day internationals. The 6ft 2in fast-medium bowler claimed 93 wickets during his England Test career and finished with a Test batting average of 23. His former Leicestershire teammate Jonathan Agnew once described him as possessing “more talent than almost any other player” he had seen.
His career started at Leicestershire and he had spells at Nottinghamshire and Surrey, where he helped win limited-overs competitions in 1996 and 1997. After making a half-century and taking six wickets in an early Test against a formidable West Indies side in 1991, he regularly played for the England team.
Notoriously, the Sun bestowed on him the sobriquet of “The Prat Without the Hat” after he strolled out to play in 1994 without hat or suncream to protect his freshly-shaven head from the Caribbean sun. Sunstroke forced him out of the first match of England’s tour of the West Indies that year.
He once braved ridicule for posing in underwear in the days when it was thought unseemly for sports characters to model a brand, and in 1999 angered some in the sporting fraternity by giving the England Cricket Board the names of three cricketers allegedly involved in match fixing — claims that were never substantiated.
A year later a hip injury forced him to retire from county cricket and he went on to play league cricket in the East Midlands and to coach schoolchildren.
This year he returned briefly to top-flight cricket, appearing for Surrey in the Twenty20 competition. – guardian.co.uk