Graham Thorpe

A left-handed middle-order batsman and slip fielder, Graham Thorpe is a former English cricketer who has played for both the English national team and Surrey domestically. Also the batting coach behind the 2019 Cricket World Cup-winning squad, Thorpe has established himself as an instantly recognisable name within the sport and is now transferring his abundance of wisdom to become an after-dinner speaker for a variety of corporate events and conferences. As a natural right-hander, Thorpe’s drive and determination took him to train himself to become a left-hander in order to gain an advantage throughout his childhood games.

He took his skills to a new level of expertise in 1988 when he made his domestic debut for Surrey before making his first international appearance in 1993. One of his early successes came at his debut Test match against Australia when he managed to score a century in the second innings of the game. Throughout his career, Graham has played in an impressive number of 100 Test matches, he has made 82 appearances in ODI and 341 in First-Class cricket.

He was named Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1998 before achieving his highest Test score of 200 no out of 231 balls and forming a highly regarded partnership with Andrew Flintoff. Following on from his international and domestic retirement, Graham has become the batting coach to New South Wales and has also made a one-off appearance for UTS-Balmain in the Sydney First Grade.

He became the assistant coach of New South Wales in 2007 after being awarded MBE for his services to cricket. Having also ventured into the media career, Thorpe has offered commentary to BBC Radio’s Test Match Special programme, Sky Sport’s News and has even written for UK cricket magazine, SPIN World Cricket Monthly. An incredibly highly regarded figure within cricket, Graham Thorpe has a whole host of incredible career anecdotes to share as an after-dinner speaker. With his natural charm and humour, Graham can captivate audiences of all varieties, even those with little to no interest in cricket, to motivate and entertain them at any style of corporate event.