Graham Thorpe: Rising from the Ashes - Hardcover

Thorpe, Graham

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0007205961 ISBN 13: 9780007205967

Publisher: Willow, 2005

Synopsis

England’s finest batsman of the last decade, Graham Thorpe’s achievements on the pitch have often contrasted wildly with his personal problems away from cricket, where drink and depression have often combined to send him spiralling off the rails. This is his powerful, painfully honest life story.

Graham Thorpe has been the lynchpin of the England team and at the vanguard of world cricket for more than a decade. Yet the national press hounded him as 'English cricket's most disturbed player': in 1999 he returned home from the Caribbean weeks before his team-mates; a year later he declined to tour South Africa in order to spend more time with his young family; and in 2001 he returned early from India in a vain attempt to salvage an already ruined marriage, four years after his own infidelities while on tour in New Zealand made tabloid headlines. The following summer his ex-wife was on the verge of emigrating to South Africa with his two children, and Thorpe was accused of 'betraying' England when he announced he was quitting Test cricket, only to change his mind a fortnight later.

With painful candour and often unexpected humour, Thorpe dissects his career in cricket and the inner recesses of his private life: the impact of his bitter divorce; the suicidal depression that afflicted him in his darkest hours; the reasons why he needed to 'save himself' by withdrawing from past England tours; the elation of his magnificent century on his comeback Test at the Oval in 2003; and his fresh outlook in life with a new partner after confronting his own failings and past troubles.

Twelve years on from his Test debut against Australia, Thorpe took the decision to retire from international cricket after the disappointment of his controversial non-selection for the Ashes 2005 tour.

Hero or villain? Thorpe's life story will go some way toward resolving one of the biggest conundrums in English cricket in recent times.

About this title

Review:

‘Thorpe’s experiences have changed him...he has certainly learned about life away from the cricketing bubble’ Wisden Cricketer

‘He has invariably been English cricket’s most complex and troubled man’ Guardian

About the Author:

Graham Thorpe was born in 1969. A lifelong middle-order batsman for Surrey CCC, he scored a century on his England Test debut against the Australians in 1993 and has been at the forefront of world cricket ever since, having played over 90 Tests and scored 15 Test hundreds. He has two children, Henry and Amelia, and is a high-profile supporter of the Fathers 4 Justice movement.

Simon Wilde is the chief cricket writer on The Sunday Times.

About this edition

• Publisher: Willow
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0007205961
• ISBN 13: 9780007205967
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416