England leftie Graham Thorpe dies at 55 !!!

Back in June 1996 – India played at Lords  which we remember most for its debutants.  The chances of India taking the honours in this Test seemed minimal. They had just been beaten in a little over two days by Derbyshire, and a downbeat Azharuddin viewed the Lord's pitch with a great deal of suspicion. Sourav Ganguly made a century on debut  and Rahul Dravid fell short of his hundred by just one scoring stroke. Had Dravid succeeded, it would have been the first instance of two debutant centurions in the same team in Test history. Only two Test newcomers (Harry Graham of Australia in 1893 and John Hampshire of England in 1969) had previously attained this distinction at the game's HQ.  The match also marked the final Test appearance of celebrated umpire Dickie Bird. On  opening morning, ruled the England captain out lbw in the very first over, and made his last decision, in his 66th Test, when he gave Russell - the Man of the Match - out leg-before in the final session.

 

The lefthander who played in that match is shockingly no more.  Some time back he was in news for wrong reasons following  an early-hours drinking session with players from both teams in which he smoked a cigar inside the team hotel and triggered the arrival of the Tasmanian police.  The man then 52  was the subject of a complaint at the Crowne Plaza in Hobart at 6am.  It came to light only after he filmed four police officers shutting down a post-series social with Joe Root, the England captain, and Jimmy Anderson, as well as Australia’s Nathan Lyon, Alex Carey and Travis Head. 

Graham Thorpe, the former England batter, was reported  "seriously ill" in hospital, a couple of years back according to the Professional Cricketers' Association and is now no more. 

Graham Thorpe,  played 100 Tests for England between 1993 and 2005, averaging 44.66 with 16 centuries. He was later  head coach of Afghanistan following a decade of involvement within England's coaching set-up, which came to an end after this winter's 4-0 Ashes loss in Australia. After a century on debut against Australia at Trent Bridge, Thorpe soon established himself as one of the central figures of England's Test team in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, with his selfless counterattacking style helping the team to emerge from the doldrums to become, by the time of his final Test against Bangladesh in June 2005, a side ready to compete on an equal footing with Ricky Ponting's Australia in that summer's legendary Ashes series.

Thorpe's own zenith came in the winter of 2000-01, when he was instrumental in England's back-to-back series wins in Pakistan and Sri Lanka - to this day one of the team's finest achievements. 

After retirement, he moved into coaching after a brief spell in the media, and after a stint with New South Wales in the Sheffield Shield in 2007, he joined the England set-up in 2010, initially as batting coach and later as assistant coach to Chris Silverwood.  That role ended earlier this year when he, Silverwood and Ashley Giles, the former director of cricket, were all sacked in the wake of the Ashes loss.   

Today comes the sad news that Graham Thorpe, the former England and Surrey batter, has died aged 55, the ECB  announced.

 
With regards – S Sampathkumar
5.8.2024