England assistant coach Graham Thorpe during the 2022 Ashes series. Photo / Getty Images
Warning: This article is about suicide and may be distressing for some readers.
Graham Thorpe’s life “came crashing down” after he lost his job as England assistant coach in February 2022, an inquest has heard.
Thorpe, who played 100 test matches for England before joining the national team’s coaching staff in 2010, was first diagnosed with anxiety and depression in 2018 but his condition worsened significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic and the England Ashes tour of Australia in 2021-22.
An inquest into his death began on Wednesday morning, with Surrey Coroner’s Court hearing that Thorpe was “distraught, horrified, ashamed, terrified” when a late-night video of a post-series social he had shared with some friends was leaked. Thorpe had filmed four police officers shutting down the social with Joe Root, the England captain, and Jimmy Anderson, as well as Australia’s Nathan Lyon, Alex Carey and Travis Head.
In a statement, Thorpe’s wife, Amanda, told the coroner’s court that he “apologised personally to everyone” but was “very stressed” by an incident that was “blown out of proportion”.
She said that he had got through a previous bout of depression without it affecting his work, but that he found the Covid-19 lockdown “very difficult” and that England’s tour to India had been “tough” for him and that he was already struggling with anxiety and experiencing difficulty sleeping.
He sought help from the England & Wales Cricket Board in March 2021 and the decision to take him to Australia, where there was daily Covid testing and even more stringent lockdown restrictions, was questioned. Both Amanda and Thorpe’s father, Geoff, did not think that he should have gone on that tour. It was acknowledged, however, that Thorpe would also have found it hard to stay at home.
“Really thinking about it… because he went on that tour, he was dismissed,” said Amanda. “That ultimately was what he couldn’t deal with. He probably had an option to say, ‘I don’t want to go’. [But] there’s a big difference to saying, ‘Do you want to go?’ to ‘We think you ought not to go’. I think that would have made a big difference. I don’t think he realised how ill he was. He wishes he hadn’t gone because of all that happened after.”
England lost the series 4-0 and Thorpe was dismissed soon after returning to England. The inquest heard that this came as a “real shock” and was the start of a tragic decline in his mental health.
“To be sacked after that, I think it was foreseeable that it would be really hard on him – it was harder than we could have known,” said Amanda. “He came back from the tour of Australia in such a terrible state. It was down to lots of things; the video, the whole environment.”
In a statement to Surrey Coroner’s Court, Thorpe’s father, Geoff, said that the late-night video incident in Australia had caused “catastrophic damage” and that his life “came crashing down when his employment to the ECB was terminated”. Thorpe, it was said, “felt a failure, spiralled into depression” and became drained of confidence, with issues of anxiety and insomnia, loss of appetite, guilt, feeling a burden and not wanting to meet people.
He had been offered a job with the Afghanistan national team in 2022 but it was ultimately decided that he was too unwell to take up the role.
He made a first attempt on his life on April 30, 2022, less than three months after losing his England job, which left him unconscious for three weeks and in intensive care for around five weeks. He continued to suffer with suicidal thoughts – despite many attempts at intervention and support from loved ones and health professionals – before dying after being struck by a train in August 2024.
“He was really suffering – it was awful to see – he just felt that no one could help him,” Amanda told the coroner’s court. “He told me he was scared and I told him I was scared too. I tried to reach out to everyone I thought. The weeks leading up to his death, he told me he doesn’t want to be here any more. He asked me to help him end his life. He said he wants to go to Switzerland. I was in turmoil. Then we get a letter for an appointment [with the medical team] in a month’s time. How ill do you have to be?”
Thorpe’s father described a son who had been an outstanding footballer as well as cricketer, who was “dedicated, motivated and determined to do well” but that he was hit hard by the break-up of his first marriage in 2001, both emotionally and financially. This was followed by him taking a year-long break from international cricket. “Sometimes us chaps are a little bit macho – think we can cope, in fact we can’t,” said Geoff, describing his son as “fine” until Covid and “not a fella who likes to be cooped up”.
The inquest heard that Thorpe used alcohol in an attempt to mitigate his anxiety and try to sleep. Professor Nick Pierce, chief medical officer at the ECB, said that a variety of wellbeing support was provided, notably through their partnership with Changing Minds, a provider of clinical psychologists in elite sport.
In a statement, Pierce said that Thorpe had received Changing Minds support on camps and tours from 2019 and that there had been “no indication that Graham was at risk of immediate self harm” during the India tour in 2020-21. He also said that a personal risk assessment and wellbeing safety plan was made before the 2021-22 Ashes tour, in conjunction with Thorpe and director of cricket Ashley Giles, and that Thorpe continued to receive support upon returning from Australia in January 2022.
Of his dismissal the following month, Pierce said: “It is a common occurrence in elite sport for performance-related decisions to result in a rapid turnaround of staff”. In his statement, he also pointed out that Giles and head coach Chris Silverwood also lost their jobs, describing Thorpe’s first suicide attempt as “devastating and a complete shock to everyone who had been involved in his care”.
A celebratory “Day for Thorpey” will be held on the second day of the fifth Test against India at the Oval next month on what would have been his 56th birthday. Amanda and Thorpe’s daughters, Kitty and Emma, are raising money for mental health charity Mind.
A stylish left-hander, Thorpe is one of only 17 men to reach 100 Test caps for England, scoring 6744 runs at an average of 44.66. His inquest continues.