Chris Wright: Leicestershire bowler says fighting doping charges was ‘difficult and lonely’

While trying to defend himself and come to terms with what a lengthy ban could mean to his future in the game when he was just months into his latest two-year deal with Leicestershire, Wright says he was forced to think about getting a “Plan B up his sleeve”.

And so he started a podcast.

“I love the game and I’d love to be a coach in the future, but if I had got a ban that was particularly severe and I hadn’t been able to locate the source of the contamination, then I wouldn’t be able to do that,” Wright said.

“So that was hard, having to think that I can’t do the thing I think I want to do when I finish playing cricket. And to be fair, releasing a podcast about bowling was born out of that really.

“The difficult part was not being able to talk about it [the doping ban].”

Wright says he is thankful for how Leicestershire also kept “radio silence” about the unavailability of their leading County Championship wicket-taker of 2023.

The former Middlesex and Warwickshire bowler, who has claimed 788 career wickets across all formats in two decades of professional cricket, returned in time to see out the final two months of last season.

“I appreciate they got so many questions, where is Chris Wright, why isn’t he here, why aren’t they saying anything? The answer is because they couldn’t,” he said. “It was for me that they were doing that.

“They didn’t want to say anything that would jeopardise the case because we wanted the best result possible.”

Wright said the level of support and understand he got at the time was “fantastic”.

“I’m pretty sure there are a lot of other clubs that would have just cut ties much earlier and they would probably have been in their rights,” he said.

“I appreciate them being patient with me, but hopefully I can reward them this year.

“Now I’ve had a good pre-season so I hope I can pick up where I left off in 2023.”