Graham Thorpe, who has died aged 55, was the finest England middle-order batsman of his era, a nuggety left-hander who made a century on his debut against a strong Australian attack and who was as adept against spin as he was pace. He played in 100 Test matches and, but for back trouble and the emergence of Kevin Pietersen, would have remained an international cricketer for longer.
Although a technically sound batsman brought up on true pitches at the Oval, Thorpe did not fit the mould of classic England stroke-makers. He might well have been drawn to football, for he was talented enough to represent England under-18s.
His character was more complicated than his batting and he could be truculent, and sometimes suffered from depression, yet he was also single-minded and fearless.
When Wisden named Thorpe as one of its five cricketers of the year in 1998, he was described as having the face and demeanour of a poker player. “The eyes say nothing, the straight-set mouth betrays no emotion. He does not believe in small talk. Yet the runs have piled up in front of him like piles of chips.”
Indeed they did, for he finished his career with an aggregate of 6,744 in Test cricket at the highly respectable average of 44.66. He struck 16 hundreds.
There were some who questioned his commitment to the esprit de corps, however, and Mike Gatting, at the time an England selector, made the rather harsh comment: “Graham Thorpe only brings runs to the table.”
A good many top-class cricketers were able to leave their problems beyond the boundary when they went out to bat or bowl; Shane Warne, who bowled at Thorpe throughout his career and rated his batting, was the obvious example. Thorpe, however, was unable to shake off personal difficulties.
“Of all the players I played with, he was the one whose state of mind most affected his play,” wrote his England colleague Mike Atherton. “A happy, contented Graham Thorpe is a world-class player. If something is eating away at him, he cannot put it to the back of his mind and concentrate on his cricket.”
Graham Paul Thorpe was born in Farnham, Surrey, on August 1 1969 and was playing with men for his village at the age of 13. While at Weydon School, and then at Farnham Sixth Form College, where he was taking a PE diploma, he was invited to nets at the Oval. There, he came under the watch of Micky Stewart and Geoff Arnold, two old-school England cricketers who nurtured his development.
Remarkably, Thorpe had learnt to bat left-handed as a boy even though he was naturally a right-hander. The reason for this was that it became harder for his two older brothers to get him out in the family garden, which had a shorter boundary on the leg side. He never changed his stance again.
In 1988 he made his debut for Surrey and he was in the England side five years later. After two defeats against Australia in 1993, the selectors called up Thorpe for the third Test, at Trent Bridge. There, he made an unbeaten 114, becoming the first England player to score a century on his debut since Frank Hayes against West Indies 20 years earlier.
A broken thumb kept him out of the final Test of the series and he was dropped briefly the following year, but otherwise was one of few regular selections in a weak era for English cricket.
Thorpe batted well against spin on the sub-continent, which not many contemporaries succeeded in doing. He made a century against Pakistan at Lahore in 2000 which included just one four, a rare occurrence indeed, but he could also strike the ball expansively and deployed the sweep shot particularly well.
He made his highest Test score, an unbeaten 200, against New Zealand in 2002. This came off 231 balls, a quick rate of scoring then as now.
He had to contend with a rampant Australian side, full of fine bowlers, throughout his career, which, perhaps inevitably, resulted in his “carrying a lot of baggage”, as Warne put it.
“Andrew Strauss played in an England side that won his first eight Test matches,” said Thorpe. “The first eight I played, six of them were defeats. It is totally different to come into a winning team. I’ve played in several different eras for England and we have never had that luxury.”
No sooner had he been discarded by the selectors, just before the series of 2005, than England regained the Ashes. He had won his 100th cap against Bangladesh earlier that summer, the management seemingly finding room for sentiment in their selection, and he did make some runs, but Pietersen and Ian Bell were now clearly preferred in the middle order.
On his home ground at the Oval, Thorpe remained a popular figure. After he dropped out of the tour in 2002-03 his return to Test cricket the following summer was marked by a standing ovation. He went on to score 124, propelling England to victory over South Africa.
He played for Surrey until 2005, scoring 21,937 runs in all first-class cricket at 45.04, not dissimilar to his Test average, which showed how well he adapted to the international game. In one-day cricket he made 2,380 runs for England at 37.18.
Thorpe’s post-playing career encompassed some media work, writing a self-lacerating autobiography and working as a specialist batting coach and assistant coach for New South Wales, and then for England from 2010 until 2022, when he was sacked along with Chris Silverwood, the coach, following another heavy defeat in Australia.
Bizarrely, he filmed the players partying at the end of the series and the footage, including Tasmanian police telling leading players to go to bed following a complaint about “intoxicated people”, ended up on the website of the Sydney Morning Herald. Officers had apparently been called because Thorpe lit a cigar in an indoor space.
Thorpe applied to be head coach of Middlesex at Lord’s, but was overlooked. He was subsequently appointed coach of Afghanistan, but shortly afterwards, in May 2022, his family announced that he was seriously ill and receiving treatment in hospital, with an unclear prognosis.
There was always an anti-establishment, non-conformist streak to Thorpe’s character, which England had to manage carefully. He flouted dress codes and, although not a troublemaker, he viewed authority with suspicion. At one stage of his life an anti-monarchist, he none the less accepted the appointment of MBE for services to the game.
Thorpe was badly affected by the death of Graham Kersey, his Surrey team mate and friend, after a car crash in 1997. He had a much-publicised and messy divorce from his first wife, Nicky, following his infidelity. They had a son and a daughter, who survive him along with his second wife, Amanda, and their daughter.
Graham Thorpe, born August 1 1969, death announced August 5 2024
