| RiP Graham Thorpe 08:32 - Aug 5 with 11093 views | qpr1976 |
55 No age, lovely cricketer. |  | | |  |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 12:34 - Aug 6 with 3882 views | nix |
Thanks for this.
A stylish player and an interesting person. Very sad news. |  | | |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 14:34 - Aug 6 with 3740 views | thame_hoops |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 10:35 - Aug 6 by hoops_legend |
How do you remember that? He was the middle order protector who had to play defensively as out front order collapsed
He was a legend but England got timing right to move to
New era with pietersen in that ashes |
I was a teenager and just remember him being this exciting player with the attitude of an Aussie! |  | | |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 08:53 - Aug 12 with 3481 views | thame_hoops |
Turns out he took his own life. So so sad. He also tried to do the same in 2022. Urgh | | | |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 09:56 - Aug 12 with 3346 views | MrSheen |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 08:53 - Aug 12 by thame_hoops |
Turns out he took his own life. So so sad. He also tried to do the same in 2022. Urgh |
Absolutely tragic. Cricketers are known for a high rate of suicide but it is often put down to isolation and purposelessness after their career ends, often estranged from their families by its demands. Neither appears to apply in Thorpe’s case, he would appear to have been loved and professionally respected and in demand. |  | | |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 10:21 - Aug 12 with 3253 views | daveB |
The article by Atherton this morning was heartbreaking |  | | |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 10:27 - Aug 12 with 3204 views | thame_hoops |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 10:21 - Aug 12 by daveB |
The article by Atherton this morning was heartbreaking |
where was that published?
I thought Nassers tribute at the Oval, end of last week was superb. how me managed to stay composed I don't know. 😢 | | | |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 10:35 - Aug 12 with 3168 views | lightwaterhoop |
They had a well observed minute silence at Lords yesterday for Graham.But what a tragedy for his family. | | | |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 10:38 - Aug 12 with 3162 views | thame_hoops |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 10:35 - Aug 12 by lightwaterhoop |
They had a well observed minute silence at Lords yesterday for Graham.But what a tragedy for his family. |
I missed that. had a busy morning so arrived just as Middx were all-out. was expecting to see the last 10 overs of the Innings | | | |
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| RiP Graham Thorpe on 10:39 - Aug 12 with 3161 views | thame_hoops |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 10:21 - Aug 12 by daveB |
The article by Atherton this morning was heartbreaking |
just saw its the Times, any chance you can copy/paste here (if its allowed) | | | |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 10:48 - Aug 12 with 3155 views | Logman |
So so sad. Clearly a real gentleman who conducted himself wonderfully and contributed so much not only to the world of cricket but also to his family. Humankind really needs to get on top of understanding how emotions work so that all these horrible problems associated with our fears and frustrations can be tackled better.
RIP Thorpey | | | |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 12:20 - Aug 12 with 2960 views | nix |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 09:56 - Aug 12 by MrSheen |
Absolutely tragic. Cricketers are known for a high rate of suicide but it is often put down to isolation and purposelessness after their career ends, often estranged from their families by its demands. Neither appears to apply in Thorpe’s case, he would appear to have been loved and professionally respected and in demand. |
His first wife left him because she couldn't cope with the long tours away. I think it was reported at the time he found this very difficult and he didn't play again for a while after the divorce. I think that might have seriously affected his mental health.
You're right though that he seems to have been pretty well loved. But suicidal people often think they're doing the best for everyone by dying as they feel like a burden (while their mind is temporarily off kilter). Very sad. | | | |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 13:01 - Aug 12 with 2829 views | PhilmyRs |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 12:20 - Aug 12 by nix |
His first wife left him because she couldn't cope with the long tours away. I think it was reported at the time he found this very difficult and he didn't play again for a while after the divorce. I think that might have seriously affected his mental health.
You're right though that he seems to have been pretty well loved. But suicidal people often think they're doing the best for everyone by dying as they feel like a burden (while their mind is temporarily off kilter). Very sad. |
I think his first wife left him because he had a one night stand while on tour - she went off with her personal trainer if I remember correctly and he had a lot of struggles over his kids from that marriage.
But Thorpe was a top player, during a poor 90s England team, he stood up and fought hard for his country. Very sad news and if he didn’t have such difficult personal issues, I think he’d achieved more in the game. Not often you can play spin and pace to such a high level. In the 30 odd years I’ve followed England, Thorpe would still make the middle order if I was picking my best 11. | | | |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 13:52 - Aug 12 with 2697 views | Tripper |
Sensitive, warm and a wonderful team-mate: my friend Graham Thorpe
The former England cricketer, who has died aged 55, was a rock in the middle order and unquestionably the most complete batsman of our generation
Mike Atherton
, Chief Cricket Correspondent
Tuesday August 06 2024, 12.00pm, The Times
The phone call, the dreadful phone call, came on Sunday evening just as Noah Lyles crossed the finish line in Paris in a blur. And a blur is how the following day passed for those of us who counted Graham Thorpe as a valued team-mate and friend.
Normally the written word comes, if not easily then it comes eventually, but nothing came on Monday. Instead, as for many of those who played during the span of Thorpe’s first-class and international career for Surrey and England, 1988-2005, it was just a day of remembering, the good times and bad, the glory and the grind, and of connecting in a way that we don’t do nearly enough.
He was a year younger than me. We made our representative start pretty much at the same time, touring Kenya and Zimbabwe together for England A in the winter of 1989-90, a friendly gig given the senior team were in the Caribbean. I had already played two Tests when we went to Zimbabwe, but Keith Fletcher, the tour coach, had a fine eye for a young player and picked out Thorpe as the best of the young bunch. He wasn’t wrong.
Those were the days of shared rooms and we spent a lot of time together on that trip, in Harare and Bulawayo, mainly, but up country as well, with a visit to Victoria Falls. For both of us, our first senior tour, everything was fresh and new and exciting. There was a boyish enthusiasm in everything he did and while it took a long time for that to wear off, wear off it did eventually as the strain of touring and life took hold.
It took another three summers for him to be picked in Test cricket, oddly. He came in two matches before I took over as captain and after that we played 67 of his 100 Tests together. He proved himself to be unquestionably the most complete batsman of our generation, and the best between the retirement of David Gower and the arrival of Kevin Pietersen. It was the latter’s emergence, along with Ian Bell, that meant he missed the summer of 2005 and never played in an Ashes series victory.
Thorpe was neither languidly elegant like Gower, nor flamboyantly destructive like Pietersen — although he owns England’s fourth-fastest double hundred. He was compact and efficient and a tough, unflinching competitor. Two down on the first morning of a Test, you were always happy to see him walking to the middle. Difficult situations brought out the best in him and he was equally at home against pace or spin.
Allan Border, the former Australian captain — Thorpe was our equivalent rock in the middle order — had a worry mitt, a baseball glove that he would use to waylay his fears by pounding a ball into it. Thorpe was a worrier and a fiddler, too, with his kit and bat handles, in particular, but once to the middle he was calm in a crisis. He wouldn’t say much, but would look you in the eye. “Alright, skip,” he might say, “we’ve got this, haven’t we?”
He made a hundred on debut against Australia, in a series when we used 24 players. To give some idea of how things were different then, he played his first 26 Tests against either West Indies, Australia or South Africa, all three of whom had outstanding pace attacks (Australia had Shane Warne, too.) He was brave and a fine back-foot player, who could cut and pull his way out of trouble.
England didn’t tour the subcontinent much then, not at all between 1993 and 2000, but his first foray there in the winter of 2000-01 brought two of his most memorable performances. The first was a match-winning innings that finished in the dark in Karachi — England’s first win in Pakistan for 39 years; the second was a brilliant, flickering to-and-fro hundred in Colombo in sweltering heat against a doosra-loaded Muttiah Muralitharan.
By this stage, he was not the fresh-faced, innocent traveller who had enjoyed Zimbabwe in 1990. The schedule — these were pre-central contract days, when Test players did not miss county cricket — had taken its toll. Touring — ten consecutive winters with senior and A teams — had taken its toll, with the time spent away from his family.
The length and nature of tours, and the lack of back-up provided, reflected an earlier, amateur age, whereas the pace, pressure and scrutiny of them did not. This was a different time; less empathetic, less sympathetic, less open and understanding than now. The mental breakdown he suffered during the Lord’s Test of 2002 — he later wrote “there came a time when I would have given back all my Test runs and Test caps to be happy again” — was not unique to the period, though.
Thorpe represented Surrey throughout his entire career, from 1988 until his retirement in 2005
Players such as Marcus Trescothick, Jonathan Trott and Ben Stokes were to suffer mental health issues themselves later on, but by the time Stokes opened up there was better support and more understanding, after raw and revealing autobiographies such as Thorpe’s Rising from the Ashes and Trescothick’s Coming Back to Me. There had been a tendency for authorities to treat cricket and life as separate and detached. Not so much any more.
• Graham Thorpe obituary: middle-order batsman who played in 100 Tests
In that context, two of his hundreds made after his enforced break were remarkable. His comeback innings, 124 at the Oval against South Africa, was, he said, the knock of a lifetime. A scratchy 28 not out on the second evening, he played sublimely the following day. Seven months later, in Bridgetown, he made 119 when no one else in the England team made more than 17.
We adored him. There is a tendency to think of cricket in the 1990s as a deeply unhappy time. It was unsuccessful, but the bonds between many of those who played remain strong. He was a wonderful team-mate, happiest with a glass of something after a (rare) victory, more popular with the public than he cared to imagine, sensitive and warm-hearted.
The last time I saw him was in Tasmania, at the end of what was a very difficult tour during Covid in 2021, which brought an end to what had been a stimulating time as the ECB’s lead batting coach. I had been running in the hills outside of Hobart and coming back into town when I spotted him on a street corner, table and chairs to hand. We sat and talked for over an hour (he could talk when the mood took him) about cricket, coaching and life.
• Simon Wilde: A true great at odds with the world – the Graham Thorpe I knew
We hadn’t crossed paths much on tour, partly because of restrictions and partly because of the natural distance (especially when things are going badly) between those who are part of the touring party and the media. But old friendships from sport are curious things: you might not see someone for a long time, but when you do you slip back into old familiarities very quickly.
It’s something Mike Brearley said to me when I wrote about the 1981 Ashes series — Botham’s Ashes. He said: “You go through something together. It’s an arduous thing a Test match or a Test series. It can be an anxious, nervous time and if it goes well you experience great elation together. It’s the sporting equivalent of falling in love, in some ways. If I see old team-mates now, I find we start making the same jokes from 40 years ago, as if it was yesterday.”
On Saturday, two days after what was Thorpe’s 55th birthday, myself, Mark Butcher and Robert Croft — three stalwarts of the 1990s — found ourselves together at Trent Bridge, the scene of Thorpe’s debut Ashes hundred, 31 years before. Those old familiarities returned and talk turned to him. What news of the little man, we wondered? Then, a day later, the worst news of all. |  | | |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 14:31 - Aug 12 with 2600 views | thame_hoops |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 13:52 - Aug 12 by Tripper |
Sensitive, warm and a wonderful team-mate: my friend Graham Thorpe
The former England cricketer, who has died aged 55, was a rock in the middle order and unquestionably the most complete batsman of our generation
Mike Atherton
, Chief Cricket Correspondent
Tuesday August 06 2024, 12.00pm, The Times
The phone call, the dreadful phone call, came on Sunday evening just as Noah Lyles crossed the finish line in Paris in a blur. And a blur is how the following day passed for those of us who counted Graham Thorpe as a valued team-mate and friend.
Normally the written word comes, if not easily then it comes eventually, but nothing came on Monday. Instead, as for many of those who played during the span of Thorpe’s first-class and international career for Surrey and England, 1988-2005, it was just a day of remembering, the good times and bad, the glory and the grind, and of connecting in a way that we don’t do nearly enough.
He was a year younger than me. We made our representative start pretty much at the same time, touring Kenya and Zimbabwe together for England A in the winter of 1989-90, a friendly gig given the senior team were in the Caribbean. I had already played two Tests when we went to Zimbabwe, but Keith Fletcher, the tour coach, had a fine eye for a young player and picked out Thorpe as the best of the young bunch. He wasn’t wrong.
Those were the days of shared rooms and we spent a lot of time together on that trip, in Harare and Bulawayo, mainly, but up country as well, with a visit to Victoria Falls. For both of us, our first senior tour, everything was fresh and new and exciting. There was a boyish enthusiasm in everything he did and while it took a long time for that to wear off, wear off it did eventually as the strain of touring and life took hold.
It took another three summers for him to be picked in Test cricket, oddly. He came in two matches before I took over as captain and after that we played 67 of his 100 Tests together. He proved himself to be unquestionably the most complete batsman of our generation, and the best between the retirement of David Gower and the arrival of Kevin Pietersen. It was the latter’s emergence, along with Ian Bell, that meant he missed the summer of 2005 and never played in an Ashes series victory.
Thorpe was neither languidly elegant like Gower, nor flamboyantly destructive like Pietersen — although he owns England’s fourth-fastest double hundred. He was compact and efficient and a tough, unflinching competitor. Two down on the first morning of a Test, you were always happy to see him walking to the middle. Difficult situations brought out the best in him and he was equally at home against pace or spin.
Allan Border, the former Australian captain — Thorpe was our equivalent rock in the middle order — had a worry mitt, a baseball glove that he would use to waylay his fears by pounding a ball into it. Thorpe was a worrier and a fiddler, too, with his kit and bat handles, in particular, but once to the middle he was calm in a crisis. He wouldn’t say much, but would look you in the eye. “Alright, skip,” he might say, “we’ve got this, haven’t we?”
He made a hundred on debut against Australia, in a series when we used 24 players. To give some idea of how things were different then, he played his first 26 Tests against either West Indies, Australia or South Africa, all three of whom had outstanding pace attacks (Australia had Shane Warne, too.) He was brave and a fine back-foot player, who could cut and pull his way out of trouble.
England didn’t tour the subcontinent much then, not at all between 1993 and 2000, but his first foray there in the winter of 2000-01 brought two of his most memorable performances. The first was a match-winning innings that finished in the dark in Karachi — England’s first win in Pakistan for 39 years; the second was a brilliant, flickering to-and-fro hundred in Colombo in sweltering heat against a doosra-loaded Muttiah Muralitharan.
By this stage, he was not the fresh-faced, innocent traveller who had enjoyed Zimbabwe in 1990. The schedule — these were pre-central contract days, when Test players did not miss county cricket — had taken its toll. Touring — ten consecutive winters with senior and A teams — had taken its toll, with the time spent away from his family.
The length and nature of tours, and the lack of back-up provided, reflected an earlier, amateur age, whereas the pace, pressure and scrutiny of them did not. This was a different time; less empathetic, less sympathetic, less open and understanding than now. The mental breakdown he suffered during the Lord’s Test of 2002 — he later wrote “there came a time when I would have given back all my Test runs and Test caps to be happy again” — was not unique to the period, though.
Thorpe represented Surrey throughout his entire career, from 1988 until his retirement in 2005
Players such as Marcus Trescothick, Jonathan Trott and Ben Stokes were to suffer mental health issues themselves later on, but by the time Stokes opened up there was better support and more understanding, after raw and revealing autobiographies such as Thorpe’s Rising from the Ashes and Trescothick’s Coming Back to Me. There had been a tendency for authorities to treat cricket and life as separate and detached. Not so much any more.
• Graham Thorpe obituary: middle-order batsman who played in 100 Tests
In that context, two of his hundreds made after his enforced break were remarkable. His comeback innings, 124 at the Oval against South Africa, was, he said, the knock of a lifetime. A scratchy 28 not out on the second evening, he played sublimely the following day. Seven months later, in Bridgetown, he made 119 when no one else in the England team made more than 17.
We adored him. There is a tendency to think of cricket in the 1990s as a deeply unhappy time. It was unsuccessful, but the bonds between many of those who played remain strong. He was a wonderful team-mate, happiest with a glass of something after a (rare) victory, more popular with the public than he cared to imagine, sensitive and warm-hearted.
The last time I saw him was in Tasmania, at the end of what was a very difficult tour during Covid in 2021, which brought an end to what had been a stimulating time as the ECB’s lead batting coach. I had been running in the hills outside of Hobart and coming back into town when I spotted him on a street corner, table and chairs to hand. We sat and talked for over an hour (he could talk when the mood took him) about cricket, coaching and life.
• Simon Wilde: A true great at odds with the world – the Graham Thorpe I knew
We hadn’t crossed paths much on tour, partly because of restrictions and partly because of the natural distance (especially when things are going badly) between those who are part of the touring party and the media. But old friendships from sport are curious things: you might not see someone for a long time, but when you do you slip back into old familiarities very quickly.
It’s something Mike Brearley said to me when I wrote about the 1981 Ashes series — Botham’s Ashes. He said: “You go through something together. It’s an arduous thing a Test match or a Test series. It can be an anxious, nervous time and if it goes well you experience great elation together. It’s the sporting equivalent of falling in love, in some ways. If I see old team-mates now, I find we start making the same jokes from 40 years ago, as if it was yesterday.”
On Saturday, two days after what was Thorpe’s 55th birthday, myself, Mark Butcher and Robert Croft — three stalwarts of the 1990s — found ourselves together at Trent Bridge, the scene of Thorpe’s debut Ashes hundred, 31 years before. Those old familiarities returned and talk turned to him. What news of the little man, we wondered? Then, a day later, the worst news of all. |
Thank you. A great read | | | |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 14:48 - Aug 12 with 2552 views | bosh67 |
So desperately sad. |  |
| |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 16:53 - Aug 12 with 2386 views | Logman |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 14:31 - Aug 12 by thame_hoops |
Thank you. A great read |
Yep, quite a nice piece. Would be interesting to know a little bit more about the man though.
Touches upon the pressure cooker that professional touring sports men and women must be under though.
As others have said the agenda that the TCCB is setting is destroying the players. | | | |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 16:57 - Aug 12 with 2363 views | thame_hoops |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 16:53 - Aug 12 by Logman |
Yep, quite a nice piece. Would be interesting to know a little bit more about the man though.
Touches upon the pressure cooker that professional touring sports men and women must be under though.
As others have said the agenda that the TCCB is setting is destroying the players. |
Threw himself under a train it appears. It just gets more tragic and progressively sadder | | | |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 17:22 - Aug 12 with 2297 views | dontknowitall |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 16:57 - Aug 12 by thame_hoops |
Threw himself under a train it appears. It just gets more tragic and progressively sadder |
So sad for all involved, almost especially the train driver. Not something he/she would ever get over I would imagine... |  | | |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 19:09 - Aug 12 with 2124 views | stowmarketrange |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 17:22 - Aug 12 by dontknowitall |
So sad for all involved, almost especially the train driver. Not something he/she would ever get over I would imagine... |
My older brother never got over it when somebody threw themselves under his district line train 40+ years ago.He transferred to the non passenger maintenance tubes asap afterwards.
It’s tragic that so many people don’t get the help they need when they are so desperately in need.RIP Thorpey. |  | | |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 19:27 - Aug 12 with 2090 views | CLAREMAN1995 |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 12:20 - Aug 12 by nix |
His first wife left him because she couldn't cope with the long tours away. I think it was reported at the time he found this very difficult and he didn't play again for a while after the divorce. I think that might have seriously affected his mental health.
You're right though that he seems to have been pretty well loved. But suicidal people often think they're doing the best for everyone by dying as they feel like a burden (while their mind is temporarily off kilter). Very sad. |
Very interesting but heartbreaking last few lines there Nicole did you read that in a study done somewhere because its insight we rarely get .Feeling like a burden and thinking taking their own lives is so horrible for everyone involved there is no winners here .
Strongly agree about the train driver/conducter /witnesses or who ever has to recover the body for the family that is beyong horrific to witness .
RIP |  | | |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 20:17 - Aug 12 with 2000 views | Sonofpugwash |
What an awful way to go out of this world.
Sympaties must also go out to the train driver for what must be a traumatic experience. |  |
| |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 21:32 - Aug 12 with 1813 views | jeffranger |
Really sad news about nature of his death, what the poor must have gone through RIP Graham | | | |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 22:31 - Aug 12 with 1714 views | numptydumpty |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 21:32 - Aug 12 by jeffranger |
Really sad news about nature of his death, what the poor must have gone through RIP Graham |
It's so sad
Having worked for mental health organisations for over 20 years now and actually only 3 months ago, a woman I knew from years ago, jumped in front of a train, it's a tragic scenario all round.
But so often when people become unwell, often others avoid them sadly they can be abusive or very unpredictable.
Go into hospital with cancer and everyone supports you.
Go into hospital with mental illness and most totally avoid you or are abusive towards you. Illnesses of the brain are not perceived in the same way by others.
It's one of the tragedies of our society today.
And it's as bad now as it ever was. [Post edited 12 Aug 22:34]
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| RiP Graham Thorpe on 08:57 - Aug 13 with 1458 views | PlanetHonneywood |
Really brave of the family to share this. I'm sure their sadness must be increased somewhat. |  |
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| RiP Graham Thorpe on 17:23 - Aug 13 with 1161 views | nix |
| RiP Graham Thorpe on 19:27 - Aug 12 by CLAREMAN1995 |
Very interesting but heartbreaking last few lines there Nicole did you read that in a study done somewhere because its insight we rarely get .Feeling like a burden and thinking taking their own lives is so horrible for everyone involved there is no winners here .
Strongly agree about the train driver/conducter /witnesses or who ever has to recover the body for the family that is beyong horrific to witness .
RIP |
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/suicide/warning-signs-of-suicide
Yes Pat. I've read it in several studies. The article above is probably worth a read for us all but the key sentences I've taken from it I reproduce here, in case it ever helps someone in the future recognise worrying signs
'Talking about feeling worthless, hopeless, like a burden, or like others will be “better off” without them are common indicators of suicidal thoughts or behavior; some evidence suggests that feeling like a burden on others may be a particularly strong predictor of suicidal behavior and that language to that effect should be taken seriously. Giving away needed possessions without a clear reason or “saying goodbye” to loved ones are also signs of potential suicidality that should be addressed.' | | | |
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