In an emotional interview to The Telegraph, Graham Thorpe’s father Geoff says often watches footage of his son’s knocks. “I watch the shots: the cover drives, the pulls – it’s a nice feeling,” he said.
In a century of Tests and 82 ODIs, the left-handed middle order batsman, who took his life last year after prolonged bouts with depression, was England’s Mr Dependable during a rocky phase for English cricket “I’ve got one video where he got a hundred in the Benson & Hedges Cup. David Lloyd was commentating and he said, ‘Watch his eyes – he’s looking at the gaps’. You watch and think, ‘Yes, that’s where the ball went’,” he remembered
“I have a lot of pride in what he did. You can’t take it away. It’s just a shame that he couldn’t cope with his mental health. When he died, I received a lot of letters. This suicide… this mental health… it’s a big, big problem. It smothers you if you don’t talk,” he said.
He sometimes visits his son’s grave. “I go to his grave occasionally. You have your moments of grief. But you try to find something to do very quickly. We all grieve differently. Sometimes us chaps are a little bit macho. We think we can cope. In fact we can’t,” reflected.
Recollecting his son’s childhood, he said how he became a left-handed batsman, “Initially he picked it up right-handed – the same as he used to bowl and write – but then he found that he could score easier in the garden left-handed,” said Geoff.
“You scored more runs that way than the flowers in the other direction. The garden was on a slope – and the rhododendron basically was the bowling crease. We played to win. No one went easy on Graham because he was the youngest brother,” he said.
Thorpe was such a natural athlete that he was an international schoolboy footballer, and county-level long-jumper. He quit football after he was sent off during a match he was horribly tackled.
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Thorpe would have turned 56 this Friday. On that day, the Oval, his home-ground, would commemorate him with ‘A Day for Thorpey’. Headbands sold to raise funds for the charity Mind. His eldest daughter Kitty remembers her best friend and soulmate. “He was just a joy – he lived life but he got very ill. He was kind, caring, fun and taught me how to treat people with kindness and respect”.
“He made sure we were humble and grounded, and would tell us stories of the things he’d see and people he’d meet on tour. He’d see various ways of living and always remind us to be grateful for what we had. He taught me that life can have its challenges. He told me to never lose perspective: Zoom out and look at the bigger picture and will it matter in five years’ time? He taught me to make the most of every opportunity. I love and miss him so much but I’m so grateful to have grown up with him and will take his wisdom advice with me forever,” she added.
Emma chimed in: “My dad was quite a private person, so for us to share his and our experience is important to help other people who have gone through similar things – to start a conversation, to reduce the shame and stigma there are.”
