Sri Lanka win the toss and bat

The teams

Ollie Pope will captain England in this series but Ben Stokes will be there in spirit (and in the dressing room).

“Talking of Graham Thorpe’s little acts of kindness, did you see Alison Kervin describing how he offered to look after her kid whilst he interviewed Mark Butcher?” writes Andy Banks. “A tiny, lovely little story. I was so sad to hear he had gone.”

Nasser Hussain and Mike Atherton are paying tribute to Graham Thorpe on Sky Sports. Nasser was choking up from almost the first word. “He was always there for me in my darkest moments, and that’s what I’m saddest about now: I wasn’t there for him in his darkest moment.”

You can always rely on Nasser for bracing honesty. We need to talk about this stuff so much more – not just somebody taking their own life but also the wider social context. That’s the only way things we’ll start to understand this vile illness.

England will wear black armbands in memory of Graham Thorpe, whose death has haunted cricket for the last two and a half weeks. I adored him; you probably did too. As a cricketer he was completely alien, a chameleon who analysed batting forensically and earned the respect of every single bowler in international cricket. As a human being he was totally relatable – flawed, like you and me and everyone we know, but with stratospheric levels of empathy.

Alec Stewart once said that “Thorpey will decide whether he’ll get to know you or not.” It’s a great line, testament to Thorpe’s shyness and especially his bullshit intolerance, but those who did know him speak with rare fondness. It’s hard to recall, certainly for a sportsperson, a series of tributes as raw and emotive as those on Sky a couple of weeks ago.

It wasn’t all sadness. Mike Atherton stressed how much fun they all had, and Thorpe sounds like the kind of drily funny, self-deprecating character we all love to be around. You can imagine his pithy one-liners as he walked out yet again to clean up the mess at 20 for 2. If only there was a record of his internal monologue as he walked off in Trinidad in March 1994, staring at a fixed point precisely a thousand yards in the distance after being bowled by a Ambrose shooter to leave England 40 for 8 at the close.

There are some actors – Kristen Stewart and James Gandolfini come to mind – who can reveal a complex character with just their eyes. Thorpe’s were equally expressive, particularly when he was cleaned up by Ambrose that night. But there were also times when they betrayed a melancholy that was never dormant for long enough.

A recurring theme of the stories about Thorpe are little acts of human kindness towards teammates, always done in private and with no motive beyond compassion and generosity of spirit.

Rob Key tells one in his book. On the South Africa tour of 2004-05, Thorpe went out for dinner with Key, Andrew Flintoff and Steve Harmison. Key was down because of the death of his grandmother, which was mentioned briefly at the dinner table. When they got back to the hotel, Thorpe knocked on Key’s door with a four-pack and asked him if he wanted to chat. They spent the next hour or two talking about Key’s gran, the mental side of batting at Test level, everything and nothing. As a kid Key idolised Thorpe, so you can imagine what that meant to him.

I didn’t know Thorpe but interviewed him two or three times, once a long chat in person before the 2005 Ashes, which we thought would be his swansong. At the end he said something like “Thanks Rob, that was a really good interview.”

Whether he meant it, who cares; the fact it has stuck with me tells a story. (And not only because it’s probably the only time my ramshackle interviewing style has been praised.)

The thought of the pain he was in, and of his internal monologue on that Sunday morning, is almost unbearable.

RIP Thorpey. Cricket adores you.

Read Ali Martin’s interview

Preamble