Friday, October 26, 2001 At Lord's this morning there was light drizzle, unseasonal warmth, and a great fog of uncertainty. D-day it wasn't, unless the D stood for delay. But out of the mist came one piece of hard news, and it was the one England fans most wanted. Graham Thorpe had said yes.

England's next Test team will have no Atherton, no Stewart, no Gough, and possibly no Caddick. If they had been forced to leave Thorpe behind as well, Nasser Hussain would have had a team with no core. And England could have said goodbye to their faint chance of winning in India.

It is no insult to Caddick, White, Giles, Croft or even Trescothick to say that Thorpe is much the most important player among the doubters (see news story). The two tours to the subcontinent last winter formed the twin peaks of his career, as he gritted and ground his way to 553 runs in the six Tests at an average of 61. Each series ended in a high-tension England run-chase, and each was managed, expertly, by Thorpe.

England have had to do without him too often. Those six Tests last winter, followed by two at home against Pakistan in which he was Man of the Series, are the only decent run he has had in the side in the past three and a half years. Since a sequence of 44 consecutive caps ended in the middle of 1998, Thorpe has missed more Tests than he has appeared in. He has played in only 17 of England's last 37 matches, whether through injury (biscuit fingers, mystery calves), family commitments (he took a rare winter off in 1999-2000 to be with his wife Nicky and their two small children), or the selectors making a point (by not bringing him straight back after that). He has been in danger of ending up like England's best left-hander of the generation before him, David Gower, who played 117 Tests when it should have been more like 150.

Thorpe is England's most adaptable batsman, equally adept at counter-attacking against the quicks and engaging in battles of attrition with the spinners. He is as good a player on the shiny trampolines of Perth and Bridgetown as he is on the dustbowls of the subcontinent, and he is also England's best slip-catcher. In this touring party, his only rival for Most Valuable Player is Nasser Hussain, who is a less commanding batsman (except in South Africa) but a more dynamic personality, with an appetite for leadership which Thorpe has never shared. He is the perfect senior pro, in a squad that badly needs one. With him on board, England's depleted team will be at least half-decent.

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