Teacher and cricketer jailed on drug charges

A former semi-professional cricketer and a teacher from the Black Country have been jailed for bringing cocaine disguised as a hair product into the West Midlands from Jamaica.

The drug was hidden in a tube disguised as a beauty product called Top Brass when it was sent from the Caribbean to the UK.

Customs officials intercepted the package in August last year and replaced the cocaine with a harmless powder before sending it on to its way.

It arrived in Deeside, North Wales, where former teacher Dane Taylor and former cricketer Calver Wright, both from Wolverhampton, were arrested when they arrived to pick it up

Taylor, aged 49, of Grosvenor Road, Bushbury, was said to be the direct link with Jamaica and was yesterday jailed for four-and-a- half years.

Semi-professional cricketer Wright, aged 34, of Legge Street, Parkfields, was given three-and-a-half years. He played for Penn in the mid-2000s.

Taylor's contact on Deeside, a single mother who was said to have recruited and paid others to receive the parcels, was jailed for a year.

In all, seven people were sentenced yesterday after pleading guilty to two charges of importation of cocaine between August 2008 and August last year.

Judge Niclas Parry, sitting at Mold Crown Court, told the gang: "This was carefully thought out, well planned, designed to make detection as difficult as possible, so that cocaine could be brought into the UK for distribution in the West Midlands." Judge Parry said Taylor was the head of the gang, and Wright was his right-hand man.

Miss Caroline Atherton, defending Taylor, said he had taught science and PE for 10 years in Jamaica and came to the UK in 1995 to seek a better life.

He turned to crime when the family's land had come under threat in Jamaica and he was unable to send money needed for legal proceedings for its recovery.

Mr Simon Mintz, for Wright, said he accepted he would now probably be automatically deported.

By Crime Correspondent Mike Woods