Zeroes: Chris Lewis

As introduced yesterday, this weekend sees the birth of a new feature on The Reverse Sweep. Our Cricket Heroes & Zeroes. Each week a new hero (hooray!) will be added on a Saturday, whilst a devilish zero (boo, hiss!) will follow on the Sunday; well that is the intention anyway. The aim is not to provide a long diatribe as to why a cricketer (or occasionally something else cricket related) is good or bad in our eyes, but to provide no more than five reasons why they are a Hero or a Zero.

So, to our first zero, which perhaps appropriately enough is a proper real life villain - the former England all-rounder Chris Lewis.

Zero 1: Chris Lewis, England (32 tests, 1105 runs at 23.02, HS 117, 93 wickets at 37.52, BB 6/111)

One of many England cricketers to emerge between the mid-1980s and Andrew Flintoff to be tagged as the 'New Botham', Lewis confounded and disappointed in equal measure. Here are five reasons why Lewis, now a guest of Her Majesty's Prison Service is a Reverse Sweep Zero.

1. A wasted talent - Someone who can score a test hundred in Madras, has a highest first-class score of 247 and took over 500 first-class wickets was obviously talented. But Lewis delivered less often for England than an impotent postman on long-term sick leave. He was the antithesis of Paul Collingwood in that he extracted the bare minimum from his reserves of talent.
2. Bad decision making - Whether it was having his head shaved before playing in 100 degree heat, turning up late for training or matches due to frequent 'flat tyres' or ultimately deciding to traffic cocaine, Lewis made phenomenally bad decisions on a frighteningly regular basis.
3. Brazen publicity seeking - Lewis was obviously keen to be in the public eye. If he wasn't posing for magazines in his underwear, he was making unfounded allegations to the ECB about three England colleagues who were supposedly involved in match fixing. We're surprised that he didn't end up on Celebrity Big Brother.
4. Thinking he was Sinatra - Ageing singers can make comebacks, but 40 year old cricketers evidently shouldn't if Lewis' brief and bizarre encore for Surrey in the Twenty 20 competition of 2008 was anything to go by.
5. Drugs - We're not particularly prudish, but cocaine smugglers aren't high on our Christmas card list - Lewis has 13 years to consider how sensible that particular decision was. 

Comments

[Dave (World Cricket Watch)]

couldn't agree more. More talent in his little finger than most...

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