Lewis’ walk back from disgrace to redemption

BASINGSTOKE (ENGLAND): Chris Lewis’ 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 said.

The 51-year-old — who represented England over 80 times in Tests and ODIS — said it was fear over being penniless that drove him to smuggle £140,000 of cocaine in cans of fruit into England from St Lucia in 2008.

He stood to earn £50,000 from the deal — instead he ended up serving six-and-a-half years of a 13-year prison term. The lithe former all-rounder is presently touring with the play written by Dougie Blaxland (the pen name of former cricketer James Grahambrown) about his life called “The Long Walk Back”.

“Do you know, the funny thing is I would suggest I am more ambitious and more optimistic than I have ever been in my life,” Lewis said in an interview conducted at the Haymarket Theatre here. “This is a stage of my life I should have gone through in my 20s with a whole set of new experiences. It is a place I have not been since I was a teenager... a place when that teenage boy was dreaming of being a cricketer.”

The play, directed by Australian husband and wife Shane Morgan and Moira Hunt of the Bristol-based Roughhouse Theatre, has helped re-light the fire within him. “It (the play) all comes together from an idea of how we have reached here when less than a decade ago I was sat in a prison cell and my life was more than over,” Lewis said.

It is a far cry from when Lewis, whose girlfriend Patricia stayed loyal despite him putting her ‘through the wars’, contemplated taking his own life on the first night he was incarcerated.

“You cannot get over the prospect of facing a sentence of 15 years.

“If you have not been in jail it seems an unimaginable amount of time. The question of ‘if this goes the wrong way what will you do’ and (suicide) was something on the table. It is ironic that after being sentenced to 13 years that did not occur to me. 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.”