Chris Lewis jailed for 13 years

May 21, 2009 News

– Guyana born England Test player found guilty of smuggling cocaine

The former England Test Cricketer Chris Lewis, has been found guilty of smuggling cocaine into England after being given cans of fruit juice to carry onto a flight from St Lucia, a jury at Croydon Crown Court heard.

Chris Lewis

The 41-year-old Lewis, who hails from Agricola in Guyana, was arrested at Gatwick Airport last December after customs officials found cans of juice in which cocaine had been dissolved. He was stopped along with a friend, Chad Kirnon, a former basketball player for London Towers, while arriving back from holiday in St Lucia.

Lewis said that Kirnon had later offered to take the blame if he paid him £100,000.

The total value of the haul is estimated at £140,000.

Lewis told the jury he smoked cannabis while in St Lucia but was “completely innocent” of knowingly smuggling in drugs. Both Lewis and Kirnon have received 13-year jail terms.

He informed that Kirnon had asked him to carry the tins of fruit as he was concerned his luggage might be overweight. “I don’t necessarily believe that Mr. Kirnon wanted me to get caught, but if you infer by Mr. Kirnon giving me the cans that he set me up then yes,” Lewis said. “Generally throughout my life, my cricket career, when things have gone wrong its gone wrong in a very public way.”

When he wasn’t posing for a magazine in his underwear, shaving his head and getting sunstroke, or turning up late for practice because of a “flat tyre”, Lewis could touch the heights few in the county game can reach. His fast-medium seamers were propelled by an athletic, high action, his batting was full of exquisite onside drives and fierce cuts, and his fielding could be sensational. But, apart from some excellent bowling in the 1992 World Cup, he rarely delivered when England needed him most,

Lewis is currently in High Down prison where he revealed he is now the anti-bullying representative, as well as working as his block’s race-equality rep. “It’s a simple one, either you did it and you knew or you didn’t,” he said. Lewis added that Kirnon, who is also at High Down, had approached him in prison and asked him for £100,000 in exchange for taking the blame.

“Until that point it was a simple case,” he said. “You had given me the juice…just say so, story’s over. Now he’s trying to get a bit of cash out of me.”

Lewis scored a century and 4 fifties and took 93 wickets including a career best 7-114 from 32 Tests. The controversial all-rounder was in and out of the Test side, despite going on six consecutive tours and hitting a hundred in a lost cause at Madras in 1992-93. Lewis was never fully accepted by his peers, and he was ostracised further when, in 1999, it emerged that he had passed on the names of three England cricketers allegedly involved in match-fixing to the ECB.

He drifted out of the game an unfulfilled talent but returned to Surrey last year, aged 40, when he signed a pay-as-you-play contract for the Twenty20 Cup. But injury brought it to an early end, and another surprise followed before the year was out, when he was arrested at Gatwick and charged with smuggling drugs.