Bad rubber

Chris Lewis has always rubbed people up the wrong way. I knew him first as a lad of 19 on his way to join the 1994 tour party to West Indies, all the way through his Test and one-day career and met him again - briefly - after he retired.

He was always at the centre of controversy whether he was bowling Mohammad Azharuddin up the hill at Lord's, taking six-for against West Indies, hitting two double hundreds in his first class career, or getting the ball to lift off a length on that dead pitch at Grace Road.

I wondered briefly if he might be England's first black captain but what I knew was that he was one of the greatest fielders I ever saw. Jonty Rhodes, Mark Waugh and the rest can take a step backwards; this superbly fit, 6ft 4in, lean, quick athlete several times in my sight snatched catches and run-out half chances he had no right to attempt.

Yet alongside these achievements I got used to the sound of someone denigrating his feats. I was standing next to another great fielder in a press box somewhere when Lewis leapt for a catch in the gully, got no more than a finger tip to it, scrambled after the ball and ran out the man heading for the bowler's end.

I promise you it was a magic moment. The old Test player grunted. "Yes, but he is a complete onion," he shouted. You may translate "onion."

One of his international captains laughed when he heard praise of Lewis the fielder. "Not in the same class as Rhodes," he muttered. That same leader contrived to blame Lewis for Brian Lara's 375 because he bowled the bouncer that brought the four that broke the record.

Was it because Lewis was a teetotal fitness fanatic who spoke his mind and followed his religion so closely? Was it the (untrue) story that he dropped out of a Test with a headache? Or can we find a common denominator among the failures of Lewis, Mark Ramprakash and Philip DeFreitas?

It is a sad fact that many people who know him will take satisfaction from his sentence of 13 years in jail for drug smuggling. It is difficult to sympathise. If his story is true he is a fool; if the story told by his accomplice is accurate Lewis is a crook.

Don't ask me. All I know is that I liked the lad for all his occasional stupidities and I hope he can find salvation by doing good works in jail.

That would be typical of him. Don't be surprised, though, if he manages to rub someone up the wrong way first.