He Will Be Missed

Graham Thorpe might never have been blessed with the heavenly sense of timing of the other great English left-hander before him David Gower (or Sourav Ganguly for that matter). However, he did not let that be a problem while batting, overcoming this deficiency with some superb skills in other aspects: most importantly tremendous patience, a great mind and a big heart, not to mention very good technique. Off the field however his lack of timing has let him down over and over again.

Don't really mean to go into his notorious exploits - skipping tours due to family problems, abandoning the team on the morning of a Test match, making himself available and withdrawing himself within a few hours, spending a whole test with mind completely elsewhere to be subsequently left out in the cold for a year ... no, not even his (in my opinion) pretty stupid public announcement of accepting a full-time coaching job with New South Wales. All thse reek of bad timing but today on the second day of the first test of a potentially thrilling series his announcement of retirement is baffling to say the least.

True, dropping him was a HUGE mistake. And I say this despite Pietersen his replacement top-scoring today ... for Thorpe and Pietersen are not like-for-like replacements at all. In fact I would stick my hat out and say that had Thorpe been playing today he might have well taken England to 220 ... and the Test match could well have been on the other end of the scales. As it stands, the Aussies are overwhelming favourites - they are likely to wrap this Test up, take the confidence to Edgbaston and a 2-0 lead seems an overwhelmingly likely occurence.

I had clearly maintained that England would sooner or later require the services of Graham Thorpe. With the top order in the kind of form it is in, it was inevitable that Thorpe would be sent another SOS - much like he was against South Africa at the Oval - where he responded with a championesque 100 !! Looking at England's batting performance yesterday I for one felt that that call would come as early as Edgbaston Pietersen's heroics notwhithstanding .... in place of Bell perhaps or at the expense of Giles ... but this enigma has to go and announce his retirement the very next day ... WHY ?? ... he could be rightly angry with the selectors but to let his anger jeopardize the chances of himself and his team in this manner ?? Or did he truly not want to play ?? Or was it just another whim - another in a long list ?? I refuse to believe that he was afraid of the challenge ... Does he wish to make the selectors grovel before him requesting his comeback ... surely he should know bettter than that ...his last act like much of his career will remain a mystery. A great batsman he undoubtedly will be remembered as, much more so than his mate Nasser Hussain ... but he just could not get the kind of farewell Hussain did ... in reasonable part thanks to his own injudicious acts.

Thorpe was one of the first great players to make his debut after I started watching cricket. From his very first ODI against Australia I noticed a certain amount of quality in him, an observation vindicated by his debut century. There seems little point noting Thorpe's great innings - they are all over the electronic media today - the Lahore Abstinence act, the twilight crusade in Karachi, the series winning innings in Sri Lanka, the swashbuckling 200 in New Zealand (the fastest at the time), the tail-shepherding masterpieces in the West Indies ... just to name a few ... but what is most poignant is his contribution in his last series (sorry Bangladesh) last "real" series in South Africa ... while he scored next to nothing in the matches that ended in a result the series would have been clearly lost but for his heroic hundred at Durban and life-saving 86 at Centurion. Such is the story of Graham Thorpe - enigmatic but one which delivers acts of brilliance exactly when needed most ... he will surely be missed for the Ashes. OR will he ?? Something tells me he might yet be asked to make a comeback ... ah well ...