A PROFESSIONAL cricketer who raped and sexually assaulted a young Ascot race-goer has been jailed for a total of six and a half years.

Perveiz Aziz, 40, was operating as an un-licensed taxi driver when he took advantage of the 25-year-old woman at night on June 18 last year.

Married father-of-one Aziz, of Carlisle Road, Slough, attacked the victim after she had fallen asleep in the back of his car following a day drinking champagne at Ascot Ladies Day.

The complainant said she woke up to find Aziz raping her in a secluded spot in Charters Road, Sunningdale, Guildford Crown Court was told.

Jailing him, Judge Robert Fraser said the offence was aggravated by the fact the crimes had been committed on a lone woman after dark.

“It places the case in a very serious category. This was a callous rape. You knew she had been drinking and was tired,” he said.

In her evidence, the victim said the driver who had picked her up near a taxi rank in Ascot had raped her and then told her: “I’ll make you a deal. You pay for the petrol and I’ll drive you back home.”

But when they stopped at the Shell Wheatsheaf filling station, Virginia Water, the traumatised lady got out of the Hyundai and told staff and customers on the forecourt what had happened to her, said prosecuting counsel William Saunders.

“She was very distressed and shoeless,” he said.

Aziz drove off but was later arrested after his vehicle’s registration number was captured on CCTV, said Mr Saunders.

He claimed to police that he had merely gone to Ascot for a day out, but in court admitted he was in town to pick up customers for cash even though his mini-cab driver's licence had expired a month earlier.

Aziz told detectives and jurors that he had sex with the woman at her instigation – and she had threatened to call the police unless he agreed to drive her to her 55 miles to her home, free-of-charge.

“She was blackmailing me,” he said.

But Mr Saunders described the defendant’s story as a “pack of lies.”

Judge Fraser said he had to have regard to the fact that the defendant - a well-known cricketer in his native Rawalpindi - was of previous good character.

Since coming to the UK in 2000, Aziz had played for cricket clubs such as Slough, Finchampstead, Trowbridge and Portsmouth where he had been head coach.

He had now been signed to play for Stoke-on-Trent.

In a police interview, the woman said she and her friends had drunk four bottles of champagne at the racecourse before going for more drinks at Jagz bar, Ascot.

She said she then went to a nearby taxi rank where she was picked up by the defendant and nodded off on the back seat of the car only to wake up and find Aziz on top of her.

Aziz who denied rape and sexual assault by penetration was found guilty unanimously of both counts.

He was jailed for six years and six months for rape and three years for sexual assault by penetration, to run concurrently.

Aziz was also placed on the Sex Offenders register.