Five Graham Thorpe innings that were equal parts silly, brilliant and vital

8 minute read

We don’t know whether Graham Thorpe was underappreciated exactly, because it seems like every England supporter who watched him play in fact valued him immensely. We do feel that Thorpe has been under-written-about though… so we’ve written about him.

If you want a sense of what Thorpe meant to England fans who followed the team during his era, take a look at our recent tribute to him. The crux is that there wasn’t much to shout about back then and no-one did more to retain that glimmer of optimism that your voice might one day again warrant being raised.

That’s that what these five innings were about really: conjuring and nurturing that sense that maybe there were better days ahead.

1. Hundred and a golden duck v Australia, 1995

In many respects the 1994/95 Ashes was a textbook example of England cricket in the 1990s – except for one utterly mad but actually true fact. They somehow went into the fifth and final Test with a chance of levelling the series.

This was the tour when Australia were famously left playing Australia A in the finals of a quadrangular one-day series after England had finished third. Back then, these sorts of tournaments played out in gaps between the Tests – there was almost a month between the first and second Tests, for example. England were serving up 90s chaos long before then though.

Firstly, England captain Mike Atherton quite understandably wanted to take Angus Fraser on tour because he was basically his best bowler. Chairman of selectors Ray Illingworth less understandably disagreed and dropped him.

The players who were selected then did their bit. By the time they got to the first Test, Alec Stewart had fractured a finger, Shaun Udal had broken a thumb and both Devon Malcolm and Joey Benjamin had contracted chickenpox. Fraser was duly called up as cover.

Darren Gough made a big impact on his first tour, but had to go home injured after the third Test.

Ah, the 90s…

1st Test: England were all out for 167 replying to Australia’s 426 and ended up losing by 186 runs. Thorpe was the second-highest scorer in both innings with 28 and 67.

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2nd Test: Australia set the tourists 388 to win, whereupon England were bowled out for 92. (Thorpe had top-scored with 51 in the first innings.)

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3rd Test: England had the better of a draw. Thorpe was on 47 not out when Atherton infamously declared on Graeme Hick when he was 98 not out.

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4th Test: Thorpe arrived at 30-2 in the second innings with Australia still 46 ahead. Not a great position, but he peeled off 83 off 117 balls. Malcolm and Chris Lewis then took four wickets each to earn England a rare win.

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5th Test: After Australia made 402, England responded exactly how they so often did in the 1990s – by sliding to 77-4. Everyone knew the series was now realistically over, but Thorpe nevertheless performed that particular magic trick of his and manifested faint hope out of complete thin air.

It was a textbook Thorpe innings really: stopping the rot, playing like a dream, giving England fans a reason to carry on following the match. On the scorecard, his 123 stands out like a beacon, the ducks of Mike Gatting and John Crawley either side of it hinting at what might have been had someone else been batting in his slot.

Indeed, if there were any doubt that things could have been worse, England’s second innings clarified that when they slid to 27-6 in pursuit of 453. In marked contrast to his first innings, Thorpe was out first ball.

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Some of you may take issue with our presentation of a defeat in which our protagonist finished with a golden duck as an upbeat source of hope. To those people we say, congratulations on not supporting England during the 1990s.

2. Playing for rain v Australia, 1997

There’s a tendency to look back on innings in isolation, weighing their impact only on the match in which they occurred. To get a real sense of the value of Graham Thorpe, you have to understand that sometimes a performance can have a broader impact.

There isn’t much glory in keeping a team from utterly imploding, but those innings can at times set a team up for what follows. A case in point: in the fifth (but not final) Test of the 1997 Ashes, when Thorpe vainly and valuably tried to bat out the fourth day.

England had been set 451 to win. Given that Australia’s attack featured Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne and early vintage Jason Gillespie (who was way, way better than people sometimes remember), that was pretty unlikely. By the scheduled close of play, they were 166-8 and Australia captain Mark Taylor claimed the extra half-hour to finish things off.

It all looked a bit forlorn. John Crawley was England’s second-highest scorer with 33. After him it was Nasser Hussain with 21 and then Alec Stewart with 16. There was still a full day’s play to go.

But you never know. It might rain. You have to try.

Memorably, fruitlessly, pricelessly, Thorpe did. He was on 82 not out off 92 balls when he ran out of partners before that half-hour had passed.

A waste of time? In terms of the match, perhaps, but it demonstrated that runs could be scored even when the situation seemed impossibly tough.

In the sixth Test, England made 180 and 163, but won the match after bowling Australia out for 104 in the fourth innings. That they had anything to bowl at all was not just indirectly down to Thorpe and his inspirational efforts against the odds in the previous Test, he directly contributed too, top-scoring with 62 in England’s second innings.

3. We’ll get ’em in singles v Pakistan, 2000

As we wrote in our Thorpe tribute, nothing better exemplified Nasser Hussain’s pragmatic attitude to improving England’s results than the left-hander’s 118 off 301 balls in the first Test v Pakistan in Lahore in 2000.

In that obituary piece, we described this as of the most nurdlesome innings of all time, citing the volume of fours (two) as evidence of this. We’re not quite sure that does it justice though, so here’s another stat.

During that innings, Thorpe went 233 deliveries without hitting a four. No-one this century has ever gone longer. (According to sportsstats.com.au, in 1978/79 Geoff Boycott faced 569 balls between boundaries, a span of shotlessness that spanned six innings (including one of 337 balls). Amusingly, there was actually a four in this time, but it required two overthrows.)

Pakistan’s was not a bad bowling attack. Wasim Akram opened the bowling, Saqlain Mushtaq took eight wickets with Mushtaq Ahmed offering spin support. Look at those players and factor in the lack of fours and 118 off 301 balls doesn’t seem that slow. If nothing else, it’s quite a lot of running.

This was England’s first tour of Pakistan in 13 years and no-one really knew what they were doing. Thorpe helped them get the lay of the land. He was also there at the end of the series, in the dark, when they secured their first series victory in Pakistan for 39 years.

4. The lonest of hands v Sri Lanka, 2001

After victory in Pakistan, England headed to Sri Lanka where they lost the first Test by an innings. This was generally how things went when they came up against Murali.

But then they won the second Test. Thorpe was second-highest scorer in the first innings with 59 and top-scored with 46 in the run-chase that followed.

His performance in the third Test though was a masterpiece.

That match in Colombo was not a high-scoring game. Mahela Jayawardene was the only other batter on either side to make a fifty. Given Jayawardene made 11 Test hundreds at that ground and averaged 74.89, that’s quite the benchmark to surpass.

Thorpe scored 145 runs in his two innings and was never dismissed. The next best England effort after his 114 not out was Michael Vaughan’s 26 in the first innings – in fact no-one else passed 30 in the second, third or fourth innings of the match.

After all his efforts, Thorpe was feeling a little dehydrated going into the second innings. He later told The Cricket Monthly: “I was going to slide down the order to number six and was discussing it with Nasser, saying, ‘I’m feeling really dizzy, mate,’ but we quickly lost two wickets and Nasser said, ‘No, get out there.’

England finished on 74-6. Thorpe made 32 not out.

5. A double hundred from nowhere v New Zealand, 2002

Nasser Hussain’s 106 against New Zealand in Christchurch in 2002 would under normal circumstances have been a player of the match performance. The next highest score in the innings was Mark Ramprakash’s 31 and when New Zealand replied, nobody passed 42.

Tricky pitch, yeah? It definitely looked it when England slumped to 106-5 in their second innings. At that point, Thorpe and Andrew Flintoff put on a partnership of 281 runs.

It’s pretty freakish to score 200 off 231 balls at the best of times, but you don’t ordinarily start out from there.

Despite this, Thorpe’s player of the match award was a colossal miscarriage of justice because Nathan Astle’s 168-ball 222 unarguably surpassed it (along with almost every other Test innings that’s ever been played – a 10th wicket partnership of 118 in 55 minutes would be quite the feat even in a format where the fielding captain can’t post every single fielder on the boundary).

A final word

At a time when England batters didn’t average 40, Thorpe averaged 44.66 and he did this without the kinds of innings that typically sustain such an average – his second-highest Test score was just 138.

Day after day, Thorpe turned up. For that reason, it is not really the innings highlighted here that sum him up as a player, so much as all the other ones we’ve only mentioned in passing.

It would be wrong to say Graham Thorpe won respect. The truth is he reliably accumulated it.

We didn’t used to have the time to do longer features like this, so a big thank you to anyone who’s ever contributed to our Patreon campaign. That’s what makes this kind of thing possible.