Maybe you, like me, thought the Chris Lewis story had a fairly strong random, or even “one-off”, flavour to it. Here was a retired England cricketer arrested at Gatwick trying to re-enter Britain with five tins of liquid cocaine in his kitbag. You'll thumb your back editions of Wisden for some time without spotting too many of those. “Lewis, caught Customs, bowled Revenue, 13 (years).” It's a pretty exclusive club.

Or is it? Maybe it's only getting caught that makes you exclusive. After the hapless Lewis had been sentenced at Croydon Crown Court this week, Peter Avery, the assistant director of criminal investigations at Revenue & Customs, performed an analysis of the case that caused one to ask some hard questions about one's naivety in this area.

“Clearly Lewis has been sucked in by a criminal organisation for whom he was an ideal mule,” Avery explained. “A cricketer with a high profile carrying his bag is an obvious choice.” An ideal mule? An obvious choice? Really? But then again - yes, of course. Think about a cricket bag for a moment: so roomy, so innocent, so likely to be clogged up with used plasters and unsavoury items of intimate sporting apparel.

If you're trying to get £140,000-worth of Class A substances out of St Lucia in the luggage of a suspicion-deflecting airline passenger, you're going to take the bloke with the Kookaburra Pro Upright Wheelie Bag over the bloke with the electric guitar case every time.

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But that's not the full extent of it. Heed well the following terrifying extrapolation from Avery: “We have got the Olympic Games coming up in 2012 and clearly sportsmen and women will be targeted by organised criminal gangs from all over the world with a view to facilitating the importation of drugs to the UK.”

Gobsmacking: Olympic mules! While we excitedly await bulletins from Lord Coe on the progress of the facilities in Stratford, deep in the background, officers are snapping on the latex gloves and readying themselves for an influx of illegal mood-alterers.

Feelers may already be out for a malleable high-diver who might not be averse to folding in a little something extra with his smalls. Innocence again bites the dust. Was Boris Johnson aware last summer, when he stood on that stage in Beijing and invited the world to join him in London for the XXXth Olympic Games, that he was teeing up a can't-miss opportunity to flood the skunk market on the sly?

So, one is bound to wonder: who are the Olympians most likely to be carrying something that can be cut up, repackaged and moved on later? Suspect no one and suspect everyone is the sensible Customs official's watchword - although suspect the equestrianism people more than most, one might add, on account of the amount of equipment they bring in, and turn over that Dutch loose-box as carefully as you have ever turned over anything.

What a leap, though - from Lewis with his nobbled tins of juice to a scenario in which a UK Customs officer at Luton is saying: “Excuse me, sir. Would you mind opening up that javelin for me?”

In the past, the main worry was whether or not athletes were on drugs, but clearly that whole business can take a back seat now. In 2012, the big question is going to be, how much are they smuggling, of which drug, and in what? And also: “Did you pack that archery target yourself, madam?” We have been warned.

Harrington's running jump

Exciting news from the front line of golf, where Padraig Harrington has discovered, in tests outside official play, that he can hit the ball a lot farther if he takes a run-up. Apparently, rushing into the ball, hockey-style, in the manner adopted by Adam Sandler in the movie Happy Gilmore, increased Harrington's average distance off the tee by 30 yards.

He reported some diminishment in accuracy, but that's a negligible consideration beside the massive potential boost for spectator-friendliness from a move that - in case you're wondering - is not against the rules. The run-up sits well alongside two other golfing initiatives this column has always been keen to back: getting players to run between each of their shots and instructing them to carry their own bags instead of employing a caddie. Bang those three together and we're well down the line in golf's urgent quest to be regarded as a proper sport, rather than as a pastime and the poor relation of snooker.

Humility is coming home

The message coming loud and clear (or, rather, softly and with due deference) from the launch of England's World Cup 2018 bid was that this is to be a campaign informed, above all, by modesty and humility.

The feeling seems to be that complacency and a sense of entitlement - rather than, say, bungling, political chicanery and a bit too much Sir Geoff Hurst for everyone else's liking - cost England dearly when it sought to host the 2006 tournament.

“The tone has to be different,” Andy Anson, the bid chief executive, explained. “We will certainly not be saying that football is coming home. It was an arrogant slogan. We cannot be arrogant or complacent.” What? No singing of Three Lions in support of this worthwhile cause between now and 2018? That's a bit hard on the old Skinner & Baddiel stomper, isn't it?

Maybe I wasn't listening closely enough to the lyrics, but I never caught, in those frequently chorused strains, the march of a tragically deluded master-race. I always thought it was a song about being miserable and useless for 30 years.

Still, I suppose Anson's got a point. Painted in goal-high letters across the plane that jetted Hurst, among others, around the world during the 2006 campaign, “Football's coming home” couldn't help but look a little ... well ... previous. And also quite wrong, as it turned out.

To Anson and his team, then, falls the tricky task of mounting a heart, mind and vote-winning crusade while remaining subdued and saying, essentially: “We'd quite like to stage the World Cup here in 2018 but only if that's all right with everyone else.”

That said, one couldn't help noticing that David Beckham was on board at Wembley this week, in his role as bid vice-president - just a hint there, perhaps, that the campaign might be about to fall into some of the old traps. At any rate, given the new softly-softly approach, would it not have been better to go for someone a bit more low-key, such as Phil Jagielka?

As for a slogan under which this chastened operation can comfortably reside, it's a big ask. Obviously, anything at all shouty or impertinent is out of the question. For the purposes of the launch, they came up with “England United. The World Invited” - a benign enough jingle, but it has the potential drawback of tempting limitless freelance expansion (“Garth Crooks Excited, Dutch Fans Indicted, Roger Hunt Knighted” and so on).

We've got the perfect solution. It sets the different tone that Anson is looking for. It's quintessentially, unarguably English. It's polite and the exact opposite of pushy. Yet it's direct and easy to understand and will look fantastic emblazoned on the bid team's planes, coaches and people carriers. It's “Anyone for tennis?”