Mystery only deepens

By Ted Corbett

LONDON, APRIL 19. The mystery surrounding the allegations by Chris Lewis, the former England all-rounder, deepened on Tuesday after a day-long interview with two England and Wales Cricket Board officials.

The result was a brief statement when most of the people within the game had felt that the whole England team would be cleared. Now it looks as if the allegations are at least worth further investigation - a serious blow to those who have sworn there is no fire with this smoke.

The ECB statement said: ``Gerard Elias, QC, Chairman of the Discipline Committee, and Simon Pack, International Teams Director, on behalf of the ECB, today interviewed Chris Lewis in the company of his solicitor regarding the comments attributed to him in Sunday's News of the World.

Lewis indicated his desire to continue to cooperate fully with the Board and has put all information in his possession into the hands of the Board. As a result the Board is passing this information on to the police. At the same time, the Board will continue its investigations with a view to determining whether evidence exists in relation to betting and match-fixing which might justify disciplinary action under the Board's regulations.''

Lewis said in the News of the World, the biggest-selling British newspaper, that he knew the names of three England cricketers who had, according to Ashim Kheterpal a north London businessman, sold matches for money. Earlier he had said that he was offered œ 300,000 by Kheterpal to fix an England-New Zealand Test last summer.

He has been under fire from a wide range of fellow cricketers since his paid-for revelation. Ian Botham said that he should either reveal the names or get out of the game; Lord MacLaurin, the chairman of the England Cricket Board, seam bowlers Angus Fraser and Darren Gough all suggested he should name the players involved so that the rest could sleep easy; and David Lloyd, the former England coach, laughed at the Lewis contention. ``I must have had my head in the sand when I was in the England dressing room,'' he said in self-mockery.

The general suggestion was that the Lewis story was more fantasy than complete truth and one senior England player dismissed the story out of hand with a remark that has no place in a family newspaper, but one which reflects the feeling that this part of the Hansie Cronje saga was built on shifting sand.

Lewis, 32, plays for Leicestershire, his first club. He began his career at Grace Road but later joined Nottinghamshire and Surrey. He has played in 32 Tests for England since 1990 and 53 one-day internationals. His only Test century was 117 against India in Madras during 1992-3 series. He also grabbed six for 111 against West Indies at Edgbaston in 1991 and he is still one of the top three fielders in the world. Sadly none of these exciting talents made him into a complete cricketer at the highest level.

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