Graham Thorpe – England’s Forgotten Maestro

Gareth Bland 11:08pm BST 26 April 2024

In the eighteen months between March 1968 and September 1969 four very different England batsmen were born. Two, in the form of Michael Atherton and Nasser Hussain, will go on to captain England. Born within five days of each other in March 1968, Lancastrian Atherton, and Mumbai-born Essex Boy Hussain nurtured their talent with the bat and led by example when they became team leaders. The other two – Thorpe and Ramprakash – were very friendly and often difficult to understand. While Ramprakash downplayed his reputation as England’s most prolific cricketer at Test level by reaching a century largely through his late bloomer with Surrey, Graham Thorpe is perhaps even less understood, and less appreciated, than his former Surrey counterpart. or their international counterparts. Atherton and Hussain.

While Atherton was beaten 4-0 in the 1989 Ashes series, Hussain started on the subsequent Caribbean tour in 1989/90. Ramprakash began his international career against the West Indies in 1991 and, despite never making more than twenty that summer, he looked the part. Graham Thorpe became the last of the quartet to enter international cricket when he scored a Test century on his debut for Australia at Trent Bridge in 1993. Thorpe was also the oldest to play, aged 24, while the other three all made their Test debuts. 22-year-old platform. The last from the international stage in 2005, Thorpe is also one whose record – in absolute terms, at least – pales in comparison to some of the best of his era.

After making his debut in the summer of 1988, the Surrey left-back established himself as a regular in the 1989 season. After four overseas tours with England A, Thorpe finally made his England debut against Australia in the summer’s Trent Bridge Test. At the age of 24, he would continue to be a mainstay of England’s middle-order until his sudden retirement at the age of 36 in 2005.

Unlike Atherton, Ramprakash and Hussain, Thorpe never played alongside Botham, Gower, or Lamb. Although he played the first eighteen months of his international career alongside Graham Gooch, the man from Surrey never used the culture of the champagne-set as personified by those brilliant hedonists of the late 70s and the decade and a half that followed. When Botham, Lamb, and later Gower all took a break from international cricket against Pakistan in the summer of 1992, it was at a time when the religion of the eighties dilettante was being brutally eradicated.

As Thorpe never graced the England team and the traveling heroes of 1992, he also worked during the domestic television season and before the arrival of Kevin Pietersen. Indeed, his international career came to an end after the second Test match – his hundredth – against Bangladesh in the summer of 2005. The next was that series against Australia in the second half of the summer, and the arrival of Pietersen to replace Thorpe himself.

After a 2-1 win in the Ashes, OBEs, parades, and parties at 10 Downing Street, the England cricket team became the site of television subscriptions and a fan base heavily bombarded by a traveling group of liberals. Therefore, Thorpe can be found in a time period between two different periods. Although he rubbed shoulders with many of his teammates and 2005 heroes, his lackluster career on the field ended before Michael Vaughan’s men defeated Australia that year. As Pietersen’s cocksure approach and pyrotechnics flew, England’s personality took on a different shade, with Flintoff becoming the most successful player in a long line of Botham successors. Thorpe’s diligence and quiet skill, and Ramprakash’s earnest and ultimately flawed, and Atherton’s updated Lancastrian take on the MJK Smith persona, have become almost forgotten totems of a different age.

So which games were the hallmarks of Thorpe’s international career? In 100 Test matches where he finished with an average of 44.66, playing only against India (35.37) and South Africa (35.88) his rate dropped below 40. He averaged over 50 against New Zealand and Pakistan, 49.42 against Sri. Lanka, and 45.74 against the world’s best, the Australians. Similarly, in 27 Tests against the West Indies he scored 1740 at 42.43. An average of 45.17 in 49 domestic Tests and 44.16 in 51 internationals is also a testament to his consistency and ability in different fields. Furthermore, batting at his preferred position at number 5, he averaged 56.21 at Test level.

Among Thorpe’s signature innings in charge of England was his debut 114 in July 1993. Unbeaten when Graham Gooch announced the innings, the left-hander batted without fuss, but with an ease and a sense of calm that lit up England’s summer once again. , is illustrated by other displays of nervy and maladroit technology. In an attacking sense, very few English batting displays can hold a candle to Thorpe’s 2002 unbeaten double-hundred against New Zealand in Christchurch. Although he was later eclipsed by Nathan Astle’s fastest double century in Test history, Thorpe*’s 200 came from 231 balls and included 28 fours and four sixes. It was in early 2001, however, that Thorpe played his most successful Test innings. In the deciding Test of the three-match series against Sri Lanka in Colombo, Thorpe got the better of Muralitharan and scored an unbeaten 113 off 249. With only Atherton, Trescothick and Vaughan reaching 20, Thorpe was left alone. Similarly, his unbeaten 32 in a 74-6 all-out victory led England home to victory in a low-scoring match.

Although considered a quiet man, Thorpe was no shrinking violet and often clashed with authority. Before his return to England in 2003 Angus Fraser questioned Thorpe’s ability to keep up with the team. David Lloyd, Bumble himself, had also questioned Thorpe’s status, basing his views on his experience on the left when he was England manager in 1996-1999. When the abuse of his late marriage became too much, Thorpe took an indefinite break from the game in 2002, but returned and played sporadically for England until his final retirement in June 2005. Africa’s return in 2003 for that final match against Bangladesh in 2005, he scored 1511 runs in 54.

Six years after Thorpe’s retirement in 2011, David Gower ranked him as the second England winger he had played with or commented on, while Cricinfo profile credits him as “England’s most complete batting since Gooch-Gower” time. Although he did not, perhaps, turn as many fifties into hundreds as he should have done, the sixteen he did not record were named in a way that most of his peers in England struggled to match. The angry and tortured Graham Thorpe may have occasionally been, but he was also one of England’s most under-sung and under-appreciated percussionists of the last three decades.