Mark Ramprakash has admitted that it "wasn't a complete surprise" to learn that his former Surrey teammate Tom Maynard had been taking drugs around the time of his death.
Twenty-three-year-old Maynard died in June of last year after he was electrocuted on a London train line as he tried to run away from police, who had stopped him in his car during the early hours of the morning.
It was revealed yesterday that tests carried out on Maynard showed that he was a regular cocaine user and that he also had traces of ecstasy in his system.
Despite insisting that he had no knowledge of Maynard's drug usage, Ramprakash confessed that he had heard rumours prior to yesterday's inquest.
"I suppose there had been rumours before the inquest regarding Tom's behaviour and perhaps what he'd been up to, so it wasn't a complete surprise," he told Sky Sports News. "I'm not an expert, I have to say. I did share a dressing room a little bit with Tom last season and didn't really see any signs of that.
"There is a bit of an age gap. I was away doing other things and there was a core of young players who did things together – played cricket hard, and socialised together."
Maynard had joined Surrey in 2011 from Glamorgan.
