Chris Lewis

Wickman never understood what people saw in Chris Lewis. It was during that phase when every player in the country who could bat and bowl to any kind of standard was thirstily called an all rounder by the tabloids and then compared to Ian Botham.

Wickman hesitates to write this next paragraph but it needs to be said. Why were journalists, selectors and people like Mike Atherton (who kept selecting and captaining the man) so obsessed? Wickman thinks it was because we were scarred by a decade or so of West Indian maulings. Roberts, Garner, Holding, Marshall, Croft, Ambrose, King et al had broken and bruised a couple of generations of English batsmen and we wanted our own West Indian to come in and terrorise oppos. How ironic it would have been if he'd managed to break a West Indian nose or two.

England persevered with him when most of the evidence was that he didn't swing the thing and he didn't propel it in a threatening manner. They persevered with the famously and hilariously misnamed Malcolm Devon. At least Dev was truly quick on occasion (that spell at The Oval against the Jaapies was phenomenal). Chris Lewis was just average. And don't think this is too much of a leap of imagination. Wickman is almost certain that during this time period the game was desperately searching through St Reatham, Brixton, Wandsworth and the like for a 6'8'' second generation West Indian. They would turn up at schools hoping to discover some badass gangly freak with hands like buckets who would don the lions and look to kill some Antipodean folk.

When he batted he had a sort of limp, away from your body pendulum style which bore about as much resemblance to how Botham batted as Cooky does to his Flintoffness. When he bowled (if you believe today's papers) he would slink in to the popping crease (loving that terminology) like a panther and sort of ooze the ball up to the other end at pace.

But Wickman can NEVER remember Chris Lewis being any more frightening on the box than a five year old daughter dressed as a witch on Halloween. If what they wanted was a West Indian intimidator then the comparison with any of the WI old guard or Ambrose is just laughable.

When Ambrose destroyed England for 46 in WI (top scorer one C Lewis) every ball looked like it would rip the throat out of an England bat. When Malcolm Marshall was blackwashing David Gower's England home and away in the mid 80s every single ball looked like it would take the edge and land in the hands of first slip. Graham Gooch was obliged, on the basis of having been selected, to at least turn up in the middle but he probably spent more time walking in and out than he did at the wicket in those two series.

Chris Lewis was nothing to a young England supporter of the day. He didn't ever fulfill his talent. His image was rubbish. He had neither the aristocratic mien of a Gower nor the brutal power of a Gatting, Gooch or Botham. He perhaps had the run up of a Hadlee but the delivery of a paperboy. He was distinctly average. Add to that but he never convinced Wickman that he gave a damn.

To hear that he might have smuggled drugs into the country to profit from the misery of others is not a surprise on that basis. Derek Pringle said he was shocked in The Telegraph today. Wickman just wasn't. The guy played without heart, without passion, without soul. And now he has cheapened even those vanilla performances.

As Morse would have said... "Oh Lewwwwwwwwwwwwwwissssss".