I first met Graham Thorpe when Surrey under-12s came up against Middlesex under- 12s. He opened the bowling and batted No 8 that day. He was a month older than me and we continued up the cricketing age groups, in many ways we grew up together. We shared a love of football, he was a big Chelsea fan and was a seriously good footballer, better than me by a distance.
Our careers ran in parallel, I made my England Test debut in 1991 and he followed a couple of years later. In the early 90s, along with Nasser Hussain, we were seen as the young pretenders. Graham became a fantastic player of both high-quality pace and spin, particularly strong off the back foot with his cut shots and pull shots.
I was very lucky to play alongside him with England and he was probably my favourite person to bat with. We were of such similar age I felt like I could relate to him very easily, he had a dry sense of humour out in the middle and was a pleasure to bat with, focused at the wicket but not overly so and a fantastic runner between the wickets.
During the 1990s Test cricket was very rich in quality. The West Indians were still strong but there was also the emergence of Shane Warne and a dominant Australia, the re-emergence of South Africa, Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram and Saqlain Mushtaq at Pakistan, Muttiah Muralitharan with Sri Lanka – it was a fabulous era and Graham got runs against them all. He thrived in very testing environments and against high-class opposition. His Test record speaks for itself.
He was always his own man. He would often turn up to team functions wearing the wrong pair of trousers or wearing his cap backwards. In those days we were meant to subscribe to a dress code and Graham always wanted be seen as an individual. That was an important aspect of his personality, he wanted to do things his way, he went about his cricket in that fashion but it was always to the benefit of the team.
The 1990s England team was often a revolving door in terms of players and the environments were completely different to what they are now. You didn’t know if you were going to see the same people at the next Test. I always admired the way that Graham and Alec Stewart went out and played for England as they did for their counties. If they saw a ball to hit they went after it and committed to the shot. That might seem very obvious nowadays but back then there was probably nine national newspapers along with the Sky commentary team who were just salivating at the thought of a batsman getting out to a bad shot. You could get pilloried and chastised for it. Despite that atmosphere, Graham never shied away and always played his own game. I respected him massively for that.
He went through some horrendous times off the pitch and that affected him hugely. As a father myself, I can’t begin to imagine what he went through. He faced adversity on and off the field, he went through an awful lot personally at a time when the culture was quite unforgiving. There was not really the same support and understanding as there would be now.
He came back to the England side and performed remarkably in a new era. He seemed to really enjoy being the experienced player, the elder statesman. I actually believe he was inspired by it.
A lot of us were quite surprised at how he took to the coaching after retirement. There are lots of great players who are not necessarily able to communicate their message or able to build relationships with players – to have empathy for the pressures that they face – but equally able to challenge them at times. To support and encourage, Graham had all of those attributes as a coach and was hugely popular and well-regarded. He was innovative too, using his own experiences, he knew that if you’re going to be a good player at international level then you had to have attacking options off the back foot and you had to be able to cope with the ball spinning.
His death is very tough to take and came far too soon. I’ll take some solace in the fact that we shared a lot of happy memories and memorable experiences throughout our lives. It’s shocking that we came up together and now he’s no longer here.
In terms of his legacy, it’s not just the player it is the person. He had empathy for how hard cricket and life could be. Everyone could relate to that.
