Phil Walker pays tribute to the life and career of the great Surrey and England left-hander, an everyman hero touched by magic

Cricket’s family grasps the barrier, steadies itself, reels again. The great left-hander Graham Thorpe has died. He was 55.
A veteran of 100 Tests – one of just 17 English players to achieve the feat – and maker of 16 Test hundreds between 1993 and 2005, Thorpe was the most complete English batter of the age, equally adept on the crackling minefields of Kandy and Colombo as against the ultra-quicks on sun-baked slabs of Australian tarmac. Nine of his hundreds came o...