Graham Thorpe by Graham Thorpe

Author:Graham Thorpe [Thorpe, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-00-743837-2
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2006-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

Resurrection

WHICHEVER WAY I looked at it, I was now facing the biggest challenge of my career. Any big match always brought pressure and I was used to dealing with it, but sometimes it was easier than others. To me, the key was getting relaxed to just the right extent, which was tricky. Even the best sometimes got it wrong. Crave success too much and you ended up taut as a drum, and unable to do yourself justice; too casual, could be equally disastrous. It was a delicate balancing act.

But for me the 2003 Oval Test against South Africa was pressure of a completely different kind. I was trying to prove so many things to so many people. I wanted to show my team-mates that I was still a good player, and that I still wanted to play for the team. I wanted to prove the selectors right for picking me for a match England needed to win to draw the series. I wanted to show everyone I’d overcome my problems. And I wanted to rewrite the end of my Test career.

After all my to-ing and fro-ing of the previous couple of years, I owed everyone a performance — myself, my team and the public. Just to add to the mix, I knew that if I failed England might well not take me on the winter tour and I might never play Test cricket again. I was not usually a nervous player but I was nervous now, probably more nervous than at any other time in my career.

I was very conscious of looking keen during practice in the two days before the game. As was more usual, I also started fussing over my choice of bat in a major way. I just couldn’t make up my mind which one to use. Which bat do you use after you’ve been out of Test cricket for a year?

Like Nasser, I was a great one for tinkering with bats. I needed to be sure that the one I was using was okay, and when I got my hands on a new one I would take off the rubber grip and cut bits off the handle to mould it to the shape of my hands. It was a habit I picked up after starting international cricket, probably because it was only then that you started to get a bigger choice of equipment, with manufacturers offering to make you bats to order. All of sudden it became very important that the handle was just so, and the blade. I would often worry about the feel of my bat handle in the early part of an innings as I searched to feel comfortable with it. It was a crazy habit really, and drove a lot of people in the dressing-room up the wall, but I think I was trying to reassure myself this was a bat I could lift back and then bring back down straight. No two bats ever felt the same and if you’d just given up a good one, you wanted the next to be exactly like it.

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