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, and his many critics got stuck in. He started at Leicestershire, then had spells at Notts and Surrey, where he helped win the Sunday League in 1996 and the B&H in '97, before returning to Grace Road. All the time he 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. But 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. He returned to Surrey in 2008, aged 40, when he signed a surprise pay-as-you-play contract for the Twenty20 Cup but it didn't prove a success as injury brought it to an early end. But he struggled out of the limelight and in late 2008 he was arrested at Gatwick Airport and subsequently found guilty of smuggling cocaine into the country. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison. "I suppose this highlights how difficult it can be for players to cope once they stop playing cricket," former team-mate Angus Fraser reflected.

Lawrence Booth May 2009