The Rock: Graham Thorpe
Rising from The Ashes
Graham Thorpe (2006) – Rising From the Ashes, London: CollinsWillow
Of all the England batsmen to debut in the 90s, Graham Thorpe was the greatest. Not all of his great deeds came in that decade: from the hundred on debut at Trent Bridge to limp defeat against New Zealand, the first half of Thorpe’s career was otherwise a tale of consistent run-scoring, with occasional hundreds and many more thrilling, counter-attacking half-centuries.
The early 00s brought belated fulfilment for a number of 90s heroes, although for many of them, the feeling remains that their best years as individuals were behind them even as the team finally achieved success.
Thorpe, however, went from strength to strength, now a regular scorer of match-defining centuries, and despite issues with injury and unavailability, he quickly eclipsed his former contemporaries – Atherton, Stewart and Hussain among them – with his batting exploits.
Ultimately, it was not enough to carry him all the way through to the 2005 Ashes as the sole survivor from the 90s, with Thorpe dropped on the eve of the series. As he points out here, while the media and selectors quickly boiled the dilemma down to a choice between a doughty veteran and the brash newcomer Kevin Pietersen, the possibility of playing both in the same side, and leaving out Warwickshire youngster Ian Bell, was apparently given little consideration.
Bell ultimately became a fine Test player, but apart from two fifties at Old Trafford made little impact in 2005. On the other hand, Thorpe hadn’t played a full Test series against Australia since 1997, and had been struggling with a back injury. With victory achieved, and history made, it’s tough to argue too forcefully with the decision.
The ups and downs of selection are not, however, the main focus of Rising From the Ashes. The 90s are largely skated over, a mish-mash of memories of unfair treatment and disappointing results. In any case, barring a short stint out of the side following the tour of the West Indies in 1994, where Thorpe had done as well as any of the other young batsmen selected (1) but was omitted for the returning Graham Gooch, the retained Robin Smith, and Lancashire wunderkind John Crawley, he was always in the team during this period when fit and available.
The decade ended with Thorpe more perturbed than most by the dispute over pay leading into the one-day World Cup of 1999 and unable to lift his team on the field during the rest of a difficult summer in which his contribution was questioned by selector Mike Gatting and Thorpe was overlooked for the Test captaincy at Old Trafford after previously deputising for the injured Hussain earlier in the summer.
While the self-imposed break that followed during the winter of 1999/2000 put Thorpe on the outside at the start of the Duncan Fletcher era, the failings of others and his obvious class earned him a recall.
What followed were Thorpe’s best years in an England shirt, interrupted by mental health difficulties of the very worst kind as he struggled to deal with his family falling apart. This is where we find him for much of the book: late at night, having a few drinks, smoking a cigarette, and thinking about where it all went wrong.
For those with a tendency towards depression, the descriptions here are all too real: the nights that never end – that you don’t want to end, because it means the next day is coming; the feelings of anxiety that are so heightened you feel like you might just explode on the spot; and the seemingly oblivious colleagues going about their everyday business, unable to recognise your inability to do the same.
Rising From the Ashes was rightly lauded at the time as an unflinching tale of a top-level cricketer’s mental anguish, even if this approach also made it a rather tough book to read at times. Returning to it all these years later, very little has changed in this regard, although under the modern spotlight its one-sided account of a break-up and divorce now causes a certain amount of additional unease.
Toughest of all is the knowledge that, for all of the book’s attempts at a positive resolution – ending, as these things often do, with its hero accepting the mistakes of the past and looking forward hopefully to the future – the story ultimately took a much more tragic turn when Thorpe took his own life in 2024.
A recurring theme throughout is Thorpe’s observation that players of his generation were seen as little more than resources to be used, or not, as the team management saw fit. While acknowledging improvements in this regard since the 90s, the selection schmozzle that clouded his eventual retirement, and the mixed messages he received throughout the 2005 summer, only serve to reinforce this feeling.
With the Ashes, and a century of Test caps, approaching, Thorpe is pressed on the state of his troublesome back by captain Michael Vaughan: ‘Look, mate, if your back is really playing up, then just tell us. There’s no difference between 99 and 100 Tests and I’d like to get KP in to give him a game before the Ashes…’ (2)
Despite their obvious flirtations with Pietersen, the selectors hedge their bets until the very last moment, with David Graveney urging Thorpe not to retire before the decision is made. Thorpe is left feeling that his plans to move to Australia for a coaching role at the end of the season were ultimately held against him, but notes that his decisions about a post-playing future were themselves brought forward by hesitant noises made by the England management about his place in the team.
Keith Fletcher said that he was certain from first seeing Thorpe bat at the age of 15 that he would be an England player. Despite being a youngster myself, and too easily swayed by the seductive allure of mystery batsmen piling up runs in county cricket, I felt the same sense of certainty about Thorpe and his place in the team almost immediately upon observing his ODI debut in 1993.
It wasn’t about technique, or even the number of runs scored: just a very strong sense that he belonged at that level and knew what he was doing. ‘Yeah, we’ve lost a couple of wickets,’ his body language seemed to say, ‘but we can get out of this. Stick with me.’
Perhaps because of that, or the image of the 90s team as perennial strugglers who occasionally showed grit and character but rarely flair or brilliance, the lasting image of Thorpe as a beacon of competence and consistency during difficult times perhaps risks selling him short as a batsman.
In his own autobiography, Nasser Hussain describes Thorpe as a ‘little genius’. For some reason we are reluctant to refer to our sportsmen in such terms: even when a player’s achievements are so spectacular as to be beyond reproach – a Joe Root, to take a modern example, with 14,000 Test runs and 41 hundreds in the bank – the English tend to prefer more reserved language. (3)
Root – a close friend and colleague, speaking shortly after Thorpe’s death – described him as ‘the complete batter… a rock star who could sing you a ballad and rock your socks off at the same time.’ Genius, rock star, or however else you want to describe it – from bravery and aggression against pace to judgement and guile on turning pitches, as a batsman, Thorpe really did have it all.
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Young Lions Sometimes Roar: Watching Bad Cricket (And Playing Cricket Badly) in the 90s by Ben Richards is out now.
Notes:
(1) Thorpe credits the tour with sharpening him up against quick bowling, while the approach of Brian Lara inspired a technical change and more aggressive mindset that quickly bore fruit upon his return to the team.
(2) Thorpe: ‘I’d always thought of Vaughan as a pretty shrewd character, but that remark suggested a certain naivety. No difference between 99 and 100 caps? I wondered if he would view it the same if he was ever in that position.’
(3) The mind is drawn to the name of an infamous Twitter account parodying Kevin Pietersen, which perhaps reinforces the point.
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