Graham Thorpe took his own life after several years battling anxiety and depression – believing his wife and children were ‘better off without him’, his bereft family revealed today.
The left-handed Surrey batsman, a talisman for England and hero for many who grew up watching cricket in the 1990s, died aged just 55.
Mr Thorpe, a father-of-four, was seriously ill in hospital in May 2022 after trying to kill himself. He made a recovery but took his own life on Sunday.
Today his wife Amanda and their two daughters Kitty, 22, and Emma, 19, have spoken of his battle with mental health – and their hope that his battles on and off the pitch will continue to inspire.
Mrs Thorpe said today: ‘Despite having a wife and two daughters whom he loved and who loved him, he did not get better. He was so unwell in recent times and he really did believe that we would be better off without him and we are devastated that he acted on that and took his own life’.
Her husband was considered a genius with the bat – a lover of a party with a rebel streak. His two daughters have revealed that he rarely spoke about his legendary status as a cricketer – telling them ‘he knocked a ball about a bit’ – and how he loved his family and would ‘get up and dance anywhere, to anything’.
‘That’s the Graham I know and remember and loved. Graham was a free spirit. My favourite memory of him is in Barbados, which he loved, enjoying a rum punch and listening to his favourite reggae after a swim. He was handsome, so handsome. He was funny and he made us all laugh so much’, Mrs Thorpe told The Times’ Michael Atherton – his friend and former England teammate.
The family now has plans to launch a foundation in his memory.
Mrs Thorpe said: ‘For the past couple of years, Graham had been suffering from major depression and anxiety. This led him to make a serious attempt on his life in May 2022, which resulted in a prolonged stay in an intensive care unit.
‘Despite glimpses of hope and of the old Graham, he continued to suffer from depression and anxiety, which at times got very severe. We supported him as a family and he tried many, many treatments but unfortunately none of them really seemed to work.
‘Graham was renowned as someone who was very mentally strong on the field and he was in good physical health. But mental illness is a real disease and can affect anyone’.
His battle could lead to a foundation in his name.
The eldest daughter from his second marriage, Kitty, said: ‘We are not ashamed of talking about it.
‘There is nothing to hide and it is not a stigma. This is the time now to share the news, however horrible it is.
‘He had loved life and he loved us but he just couldn’t see a way out’.
Speaking bravely in a way millions will understand if they have also had a loved-one with mental health problems, she said:
‘He was not the same person. It was strange to see this person trapped in the body of Dad. That’s why we’ve been so happy that the many reflections have been about his life before this illness took over. I’m glad that’s how everyone does remember him, rightly so, as the complete character he was’.
His youngest daughter Emma has revealed that he never talked about his achievements for Surrey and England – despite them making him a hero to a generation.
She said: ‘I didn’t really realise how good he was, until reading all the tributes in the past few days. He hardly ever talked about his success or his playing days. If someone asked him what he did, he’d say he knocked a ball about a bit’.
Surrey-born Thorpe was a majestic batsman and later batting coach and who was immediately adored after he put and numerous other sides to the sword in the 1990s and early 2000s.
It was a period for the team that many English cricket fans would prefer to forget – but Thorpe’s swashbuckling and stylish innings inspired many to take up the sport. Countless youngsters of that generation begged parents for their own yellow Kookaburra bat in the hope some of his greatness would rub off on them.
But in 2002, the year he scored the third fastest double century in Test history, he took a 12 month break from cricket as he left a tour of Indian amid turmoil in his first marriage due to his cheating that led to a bitter divorce and a battle with suicidal depression and alcoholism.
Thorpe admitted later after he flew back from touring India to try to save his first marriage: ‘There came a time when I would have given back all my Test runs and Test caps just to be happy again.’
Like Ian Botham, Graham Thorpe was such a stellar sportsman that he had a choice of pursuing cricket and football professionally.
At the age of eight he was playing at u18 cricket and eventually plumped for the sport.
His mercurial talent made him an international star at 23 when he faced the great Shane Warne and scored an unbeaten century on his Ashes debut during the 1993 test at Trent Bridge in Nottingham.
Thorpe also scored his first overseas century on the notoriously menacing and fast Gabba pitch in Perth against the old enemy, another in Barbados against the might of Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh and a heroic 64 not out in the fading light of Karachi to seal England’s first series win in Pakistan for 39 years.
His match-winning 113 not out against star spinner Muttiah Muralitharan’s Sri Lanka in 2001 will be remembered as one of the greatest innings ever played.
But fans also remember how he his stellar international career was put on hold due to chaos in his love life, that saw him return home from India to fight for his wife Nicola.
Mrs Thorpe said that while fans nicknamed him ‘Thorpey’, she revealed that his teammates called him ‘s**gger’, claiming it was because of his habitual infidelity during their marriage.
‘Graham has admitted to me that he has been unfaithful seven times during our relationship. But you can put a nought on the end of that as far as I’m concerned’, she once said
After they split, Thorpe quit cricket and spent months home alone drinking daily bottles of scotch and smoking cigarettes in front of the TV with the curtains closed.
Such was the level of his depression there were rumours that he had considered suicide. He was also arrested on Boxing Day 2003 after an altercation on his wife’s doorstep.
He said later in his autobiography Rising From The Ashes: ‘One of my most vivid memories comes from just before the last Ashes series in [in 2002]. I’d been selected for the tour but I pulled out because I was having more difficulties with [his ex-wife] Nicky. It was a terrible time which lasted a few months.
‘I was living alone in our family home behind these permanently drawn curtains. I remember waking up one morning and seeing this mess in our front room – an empty bottle of Scotch, dirty plates, a mountain of fags.
‘My wife had left me, she’d taken [their children] Henry and Amelia and I was desperate. I walked to the fridge and saw this beer. It was 10 o’clock in the morning but I thought ‘What the hell. I’ve got nothing else.’
‘It wasn’t a daily thing but sometimes I’d fall asleep on the couch at three o’clock in the afternoon having had three or four beers. It seems a slightly worrying period when I look back at it now; at the time it was truly awful. But it’s made me more compassionate. If I walk past some guy in a doorway I react very differently. Five years ago I wouldn’t have noticed him but now I wonder what terrible chain of events brought him down’.
Thorpe later admitted he was no angel before his ’emotionally crippling’ divorce. There was a famous drunken ling with a 20-year-old student while on tour in New Zealand in 1997. There were rumours of several other lovers.
But he accused his first wife Nicola of having an affair with Kieron Vorster, who was a family friend and then fitness coach of Britain’s star tennis player Tim Henman.
‘It wasn’t just an affair. What she did was to bring another man into my house and stop me from seeing our children. My life fell from under me. I had no foundations — nothing’, he said.
After he scored 200 in one innings for England, Thorpe had dedicated it to his two eldest children Henry and Amelia.
Nicola reacted with fury and told The Sunday Mirror: ‘He still insists on making the world think he is a real family man, the Mr Clean of cricket. It makes me laugh.
‘Graham loves the children, but for the last five years he has been at home for just a few weeks… and when he was away I had no idea who was sharing his bed.’
She added: ‘I don’t hate Graham. I’m just sad it ended like it did. I hope he finds happiness because it is important to the children that Daddy is happy. I also hope he finds someone he loves and can be faithful. But to be honest, I won’t hold my breath.’
But he did find love again.
He met his second wife Amanda, with her encouragement he returned to cricket again, much to the joy of his own fans.
After returning for his beloved Surrey, he was recalled by England for the final test of the summer against South Africa where he scored 124 runs.
He was close to tears as the home crowd gave him a standing ovation.
‘There were times when I thought I wasn’t going to play again and more importantly I had to wipe away the memory of how I walked away from cricket last year,’ he said afterwards.
‘I didn’t want to leave cricket like that, and you couldn’t have written it better to get a century on your home ground.’
During a period when n dominance was at its relentless peak, the fact that Thorpe averaged more against the Baggy Greens than his career mark (45.74 against 44.66) spoke volumes of his ability to rise to a challenge.
He is survived by wife Amanda and four children, Henry, Amelia, Kitty and Emma.
Born on August 1, 1969 in the market town of Farnham, little more than an hour from The Oval, Thorpe was ahead of his years on a cricket pitch and remembered being drafted by local side Wrecclesham’s Under-17s while still only eight years old.
Although he would have to wait to get a bat in his hands, he recalled taking a catch – an early indicator of the safe hands that would make him a regular in the slip cordon and bring over 600 professional catches.
He was spotted early by Surrey, who picked him up as an under-11 and never let him go, even when Brentford Football Club came calling with the offer of trials.
Despite showing enough promise to be selected by England Schools as a ball-playing link between defence and midfield, Thorpe would go on to choose the summer sport and later became one of the country’s most accomplished players of spin. Once a sweeper, always a sweeper.
Thorpe would go on to become England’s best left-handed batter since David Gower and enjoyed an unlikely torch-passing moment on his first-class debut against Leicestershire when he took Gower’s wicket with his soon-to-be phased out medium-pacers.
He was a regular feature on the nascent England ‘A’ circuit for four years before finally graduating to the senior side, initially in one-day internationals and then, unforgettably, the Test arena.
Selected at Trent Bridge for the third match of the 1993 Ashes and dismissed by the combative Merv Hughes in the first innings, he struck an undefeated 114 in the second to become England’s first debutant centurion since Frank Hayes 20 years earlier.
He was one of four players to receive his cap in Nottingham and, while he would stick around for another 99, Mark Lathwell, Mark Ilott and Martin McCague managed a total of 10 appearances. Few stayed the course as long as Thorpe, but fewer still had such an ironclad claim.
Although his conversion rate between 50 and 100 left room for improvement – he could and should have retired with considerably more than 16 tons – his quality brooked no argument.
But the demands of touring and a faltering marriage to first wife Nicky, played out in excruciating detail through the newspapers, saw him retire from ODIs in 2002 before committing, then withdrawing, from that winter’s tour of .
He was able to find enough peace to regain his place for the final Test against South Africa, greeted as a returning hero as he made 124 in front of an adoring South London crowd.
Thorpe’s final act as a player did not extend as far as the fabled 2005 Ashes – he was dropped for the series in favour of Ian Bell and Kevin Pietersen and retired thereafter – but by then he had already become just the eighth Englishman to reach 100 Test caps, securing a proud legacy along the way.
He stayed in the game with a move to New South Wales, where he worked with a young Steve Smith and David Warner, and returned to work with England between 2010 and 2022.
Thorpe took charge of his country in the familiar surroundings of the Sydney Cricket Ground after Chris Silverwood was laid low by coronavirus, securing a nailbiting draw to avoid a seemingly inevitable whitewash.
His final act with the team was to film an early hours get together between the two sides that ended with a call to the police and was leaked to the media.
It was a reminder that, in addition to being brilliant with bat in hand, Thorpe had always been one of England’s most reassuringly human athletes.