Lewis on long walk back from disgrace to redemption

BASINGSTOKE, England: Chris Lewis’s journey from opening the bowling for England in the 1992 World Cup final to contemplating suicide and being convicted of drugs smuggling has him feeling as ambitious as when he was a teenager, he has told AFP.

The 51-year-old — who represented England over 80 times in Tests and One-day Internationals — said it was fear over being penniless that drove him to smuggle $183,000 of cocaine in cans of fruit into England from St Lucia in 2008.

He ended up serving six and a half years of a 13-year prison term. The former all-rounder is presently touring with the play written by Dougie Blaxland (the pen name of former cricketer James Graham-Brown) about his life called "The Long Walk Back".

"The funny thing is I would suggest I am more ambitious and more optimistic than I have ever been in my life," Lewis told AFP in an interview. "This is a stage of my life I should have gone through in my 20s with a whole set of new experiences.”

Lewis, whose morale was greatly helped by former Surrey team-mate Jason Ratcliffe who offered him help from the start, largely kept himself to himself in prison. "A strange thing that happened was sitting on my bed the night after the sentence had been passed and I cried and it got a lot of emotions out," he said.

In the play, Lewis takes part in a question and answer session with the audience, fielding sometimes awkward enquiries. He says he is pleased by the play — which has included two prisons on its tour — because it explores the emotional side of his story.