Graham Thorpe remembered England in the middle of joy and sorrow of the fifth test | England against India 2025

Friday morning at the oval, and the ground has repercussions on a unique but not unknown sound, the baritone rumble of thousands of painful groans. It was caused by reruns on large screens on the ground of a particular type of delivery with a very specific result, on this occasion reversed by Akash Deep. The ball took off from the inside of Ben Duckett’s thigh before crashing without remorse, well, the next part of her anatomy she has achieved and with agonizing results.

The game was arrested for several minutes while the pain calmed down and the opener found his composure (the blow certainly did not make him cautious, and at the end of it on Duckett had survived an LBW review, jumped the track and missed completely with a wild swing, saw a drop of rush to less of Gitle and inverted rotation for six).

On Thursday evening, a very different sound had been heard, the cries of pain of Chris Woakes after having clumsyly landed on his left shoulder after deciding a shore on the edge, near the press box at the Vauxhall end. The news following an analysis of the day after was not good, confirming a complicated dislocation. The launcher route to recovery should take several months to sail, excluding it from another trip to Australia for ashes. At 36 woakes is the oldest member of the England team and has reached an age when few injuries are not complicated.

Among another full house on the oval on Friday, several hundred wore a white banner, sold to collect funds for the charity of mental health and in memory of the old Surrey striker and England Graham Thorpe on what would have been his 56th anniversary. A player who brought such joy to so much cricket followers, on this field more than any other, he committed suicide almost exactly a year ago.

In 2003, Thorpe scored 124 against South Africa during his last test here, a blow which he described as “the most beautiful sleeves that I have ever played, by far”. Many of the most mature members of this crowd will also have applauded for the fold, ending an absence from the England team over a year, and still the next day to applaud it. A few weeks later, Thorpe was interviewed by Donald McRae of the Guardian. “When I look at the context and the circumstances surrounding this blow, I am really proud,” he said. “It was a soft and sweet day.” But he also talked about “many times I just said:” Damn, this game tears me away. “”

Cricket is not normally the kind of thing that is described as guilty pleasure. He shares little with Emily in Paris, the latest novel in Lee Child’s production line on Saturday evening by Whigfield or Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food. But even if it was a glorious and convincing day of test cricket, the sporting equivalent of an already delicious ice cream in which people seemed unnecessarily determined to add a variety of whirlpools, cookies, chews and pieces, it was impossible to look at it without being aware of all the context he was carrying. Past and present players who were not there. Why we wear these banners.

Shortly before lunch, deeply rejected Duckett and sent it on his way with a few words of choice, delivered with a superficially friendly arm around his shoulder. After Joe Root has an exchange with Prasidh Krishna – who played with the additional pressure to be a peripheral part of this team, returning after missing the last two games – following which the bowling player was spoken by Kumar Dharmasena, who in turn led to a series of animated conversations between Sri Lankan and a variety of Indian players.

It was difficult not to rethink the justification of Shubman Gill for his own laconic meeting with Duckett and Zak Crawley at Lord a few weeks ago: “He was not just out of nowhere and we had no intention of doing so, but you play a game, you play to win and there are a lot of emotions involved. Sometimes the emotions come out of Nondhere.

And here, we sit, in our charitable bands, looking at these humans take off their diapers, expose us, entertain us.

Despite the irritating intervention of the rain after tea, it was in many ways, measured by Bang and by Buck, a good day that we had this summer. But it is the one that combined the sweet and bitter. A day of great entertainment delivered with an underlying current of great emotion, memories that warm us up and also those who relax, pleasure and guilt.