Graham Thorpe was one of those cricketers – and there have been quite a few – who seemed most in control of his life when at the crease with a bat in his hand during a tense Test match. Off the field, he experienced more than his fair share of turmoil; on it, he was calm and clinical, attributes that Test captains eagerly crave.
Thorpe is one of 17 to play 100 Tests for England and in that time he scored 6,744 runs at an average of 44.66, the figures of a great batter. He was not one of those beautiful, silky left-handers, but, by modern standards, he was pleasingly orthodox, uncomplicated and very clever, whatever the format.
Towards the end of his 13 years as an international he acknowledged he was prepared to go on the offensive in Tests while being “a nudger and a nurdler” in the one‑day game.
At his best, Thorpe was wonderfully clear-headed about how he wanted to play as he automatically factored in the conditions, the opponents and the state of the game. Soon he gained the coveted reputation of being a good man in a crisis; he almost seemed to relish them. Captains can forgive the odd moment of crankiness to have a player like that in their side.
So he produced contrasting innings for England. In the Lahore Test of November 2000 he reached his century after hitting a solitary boundary. Yet at Christchurch in 2002 there were 18 boundaries on the way to his first hundred runs against New Zealand – he would progress to an unbeaten double century and his highest Test innings, scoring at a faster rate than his partner, Andrew Flintoff.
His match-winning century in Colombo in 2001 against Muttiah Muralitharan was a masterpiece, demonstrating how Thorpe was one of the best at assessing risk and reward. Early on, he played his slog-sweep against Murali, a calculated risk that brought vital gains. The ball flew to the boundary and Murali posted a man there for the rest of his innings. Thereafter, Thorpe patiently explored the gaps in the field that one bold shot had created.
It helped that he had evolved as a deft player of spin bowling after touring with the England A side into which he was catapulted at the age of 20. Thorpe listened and learned from the coach, Keith Fletcher, who had spotted his pupil’s potential as a 15-year-old, and before long he was playing the spinners late, trusting his defence and finding those gaps.
Gradually against the pace bowlers – and there were a few great ones during his time – Thorpe had the courage to take on the short ball when he felt the conditions favoured him. His record against West Indies and Australia exceeds that of his contemporaries. In Australia, he was regarded as “nuggety”, which is a high compliment, by the way.
At the start of his career, he was one of a triumvirate dubbed “the brat pack”. Thorpe and the other two members, Mark Ramprakash and Nasser Hussain, were clearly gifted, they had attitude and they were not always prepared to kowtow to the old hierarchical ways of a county dressing room. Thorpe’s single-mindedness could occasionally morph into bloody‑mindedness. If on tour there was an edict to wear black shoes and the tour-issue slacks for a team function, he might easily turn up in brown shoes and jeans. But he was hardly a rebel. Duncan Fletcher, whom Thorpe admired as a coach and a man, helped to resolve such minor insubordination by inviting him to be on the team’s management committee.
Mike Atherton noted in his autobiography that of all his contemporaries “he was the one whose state of mind most affected his play,” adding: “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.”
There were times when he was terribly distracted, most obviously during the break-up of his first marriage, which was sometimes the subject of lurid headlines in the tabloids. This was agony for an essentially private man.
Thorpe wrote of his despair, his subsequent drinking, which led to him playing a few games for England in zombie mode. He described the Lord’s Test against India in 2002 as “the slowest torture”, after which he withdrew from cricket to an empty house, enforced separation from his children and more months of torture. Likewise he was in despair after England dispensed with his services as batting coach in 2022 after a miserable Ashes tour.
Without the personal crisis of 2002 he would have played many more Tests and his record would have been enhanced. However, he began to resolve his problems and he returned to the Test side after a 13-month hiatus in spectacular fashion with a brilliant century at the Oval against South Africa in 2003, his finest innings by his own assessment. There were 22 more Tests after that in his happiest and most productive period as an England player.
“In my final 18 months it was a privilege to be part of such a successful, stable and selfless side,” he wrote. It had not always been like that in the beginning.
His last Test was against Bangladesh, in 2005, but he was overlooked for the ensuing Ashes series. The choice appeared to be between him and the young Kevin Pietersen, in which case the selectors, as Thorpe acknowledged, came to the right decision. He argued it should have been between himself and the young Ian Bell, but he withdrew gracefully with his place in the pantheon of English run-scorers assured.
