Graham Thorpe: A shining light in a tough era for England

It is a measure of Graham Thorpe’s class that despite emerging during one of English cricket’s most difficult periods, he still managed to win exactly 100 Test caps.

Left-handed batsmen are often described as either “stylish” or “gritty” yet Thorpe, whose death aged 55 was announced on Monday, somehow managed to be both in an often struggling England team.

He enjoyed a spectacular start to his Test career with an Ashes hundred on debut in 1993 and retired 12 years later having won 99 more caps — no mean feat in an era of inconsistent England selection.

England went through the whole of the 1990s without winning a single Ashes series yet Thorpe averaged more against Australia than he did in his career overall (45.74 against 44.66).

But the collapse of his first marriage, which took place in the full glare of media publicity, led to a bout of depression and separation from his children, with Thorpe taking an indefinite break from cricket in 2002.

As he movingly wrote in his autobiography, Rising from the Ashes: “There came a time when I would have given back all my Test runs and Test caps just to be happy again.”

Michael Atherton, a former England team-mate, once wrote: “Of all the players I played with, (Thorpe) was the one whose state of mind most affected his play.

“A happy, contented Graham Thorpe is a world-class player, his presence beneficial to any team. If something off the field is eating away at him, he cannot put it to the back of his mind and concentrate on his cricket.”

And yet Thorpe, who enjoyed a happy second marriage, did manage a successful return to the Test arena.

Born on August 1, 1969 in the market town of Farnham, Surrey, Thorpe was both a promising schoolboy cricketer and footballer.

But it was cricket that claimed him and his first-class debut against Leicestershire saw the best England left-handed batsman of his time dismiss the one of the previous generation when Thorpe took the wicket of David Gower with his rarely-used medium-pace bowling.

His Test debut, during the drawn third match of the 1993 Ashes against Australia at Trent Bridge, saw Thorpe score a second-innings 114 as he became England’s first debutant century-maker since Frank Hayes 20 years earlier.

One criticism levelled at Thorpe was that a man who got past fifty on 55 occasions in Test cricket, should have ended up with more than 16 hundreds.

Memorable centuries

But many of those centuries were memorable, be it his first overseas hundred for England on the notoriously quick WACA pitch in Perth against a formidable Australia attack in 1995 or an unbeaten 119 when facing West Indies greats Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh in Barbados in 2004.

There was and a superb 200 not out in Christchurch in 2002 — a match featuring Nathan Astle’s spectacular 222 in a losing cause — and a heroic 64 not out in the fading light of Karachi to seal England’s first series win in Pakistan for 39 years.

But the collapse of his first marriage, played out in lurid headlines, led Thorpe to call time on a one-day international career of 82 matches and then withdraw from the 2002/03 tour of Australia.

Yet he returned to England duty for the final Test of the following home season against South Africa, where his 124 at the Oval helped England to an unlikely series draw with the Proteas.

Thorpe’s last Test was against Bangladesh two years later, with Kevin Pietersen effectively taking his place for England’s celebrated 2005 Ashes triumph.

A coaching stint with New South Wales, where he worked with Steve Smith and David Warner, followed and he returned to work with England, initially as a batting coach in 2010.

But a 4-0 Ashes defeat on England’s 2021/22 coronavirus-marred tour of Australia meant Thorpe, then an assistant coach, lost his job as did head coach Chris Silverwood, and the director of cricket, Ashley Giles.

There was still, however, a huge affection for Thorpe within the England squad.

This was seen when Test captain Ben Stokes wore a shirt emblazoned on the back with ‘Thorpe 564’ –- his Test cap number –- at Lord’s after Thorpe was admitted to hospital in 2022.