Shane Warne, Andrew Symonds mentioned as Ricky Ponting pays a heartfelt tribute to late England great Graham Thorpe
Published - 08 Aug 2024, 06:21 PM | Updated - 24 Aug 2024, 07:31 AM
Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting paid a heartfelt tribute to the late England batter Graham Thorpe. In a piece of shocking news for the cricketing fraternity, Graham Thorpe passed away on August 4, 2024, due to a long-standing illness.
Thorpe played exactly 100 Tests for England and scored 6744 runs at an average of 44.66. He hit 16 hundreds and 39 fifties during his Test career. Thorpe also played 82 ODIs in which he scored 2380 runs at an average of 37.18.
Ricky Ponting's heartfelt tribute to the late Graham Thorpe
In the latest episode of the ICC Review, Ricky Ponting remembered Graham Thorpe and recalled his interaction with him. In 2013, Ponting was at the end of his career as a cricketer while Thorpe was on the Surrey coaching staff.
“I had a bit of interaction with him with my time at Surrey. Remembering my last year of first-class cricket, (I) was actually playing for Surrey and I only played maybe half a dozen first-class games. But I became a capped player at the Surrey County Cricket Club, which is something that I'm extremely proud of. And obviously thought he (Graham Thorpe) was a Surrey legend, an English legend," Ricky Ponting said.
The legendary Australia captain mentioned how Thorpe was regarded as one of the finest batters of all time. He also spoke about the connections Thorpe had with the current England players while being in the coaching set-up.
“I've heard Wasim Akram describe him as the best left-hand batsman that he ever bowled to. A lot of his English teammates called him ‘the little genius’ for how good he was. And some of the guys that I work with in the UK now were extremely close with him," Ricky Ponting stated.
“I mentioned Alec Stewart before, he was the Director of Cricket and head coach at Surrey when I was there. Guys like Ian Ward that I work with at Sky played a lot with him at Surrey. Nasser (Hussain) and Athers (Michael Atherton) obviously were extremely close with him as well,” Ponting added.
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Ricky Ponting remembers Shane Warne and Andrew Symonds
Ricky Ponting revealed about the time when he got to know about the news of Thorpe's demise. It's not much time that Ponting's former Australian teammates Shane Warne and Andrew Symonds also passed away and he felt the pain of another loss to the cricketing world.
“As soon as the news broke, I made sure I got on the phone to those guys straight away, because it's only a couple of years ago that it happened with me with Warney (Shane Warne) and Simmo (Andrew Symonds) and those guys. It seems like this big world of cricket, but when you lose something like that, the cricket world really shrinks down and everyone looks after each other," the Australia great said.
Recently, while paying tribute to Graham Thorpe, Wasim Akram had posted on social media that he was the best left-handed batter he has ever bowled to.
After his retirement as a player, Graham Thorpe took on the role of a coach. He served as England's batting coach and later became England's assistant coach as well. However, he resigned from his role after England's 4-0 drubbing to Australia during the 2021-22 Ashes.
