Star cricketer asked wife to help him end life
An inquest in the UK following the death of Graham Thorpe has heard heartbreaking testimony from his wife.
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England cricket star Graham Thorpe asked his wife to help him end his life in a Swiss clinic before he died by suicide, an inquest heard.
The dad, 55, was found dead on August 4 after a heartbreaking battle with anxiety and depression for several years.
His wife Amanda today told an inquest in the UK how Thorpe had begged her to help him die when his mental health “spiralled,” The Sun reports.
She said: “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.”
The Surrey left-hander had previously tried to take his own life in 2022 after losing his coaching job with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).
Amanda told the court in Woking, in the county of Surrey in southern England, Thorpe had found the Covid lockdown “very difficult” and “stressful”.
His dad Geoff agreed with the statement, saying: “Everything was fine until Covid”.
He said Thorpe was “not a fella who likes to be cooped up” and also told how his son’s life had come “crashing down” when he lost his job with the ECB.
Geoff Thorpe continued: “What you’ve got to realise is sometimes us chaps are a little bit macho – we (say) can cope. In fact, we can’t”.
The inquest was told Thorpe was dismissed from his role following an “incident” surrounding a viral video.
According to reports at the time, the video was filmed after a dismal Ashes series which England lost 4-0.
It showed Tasmanian police breaking up a drinking session involving both England and Australia players.
The leak of the footage caused Thorpe to be dismissed and he ended up in hospital for eight weeks due to a suicide attempt in 2022.
Assistant coroner Jonathan Stevens said: “Things continued to go downhill, he was really struggling, had anxiety and insomnia and it was all really dark”.
Thorpe made repeated threats to kill himself and by June 2024, he lost interest in food and “wanted to hide away, totally isolated, in real crisis and despair”, the court heard.
On August 4 that year, he left home and was never seen alive again.
Amanda believed he had gone out to walk the dog but saw the pet at home still so tried to call her husband.
The court heard she then received a call from Thorpe’s dad telling her: “He’s gone”.
Amanda added: “He never really recovered from (his first suicide) attempt”.
“He came back from the tour of Australia in a terrible state – lots of things, the video, the environment, the set-up.
“To be sacked after that I think it was foreseeable that it would be really hard on him.”
Thorpe made his international debut in 1993 and scored a century on his first Ashes appearance, becoming the first England player to do so in 20 years.
He was an England regular and went on to play 100 Tests, scoring 16 centuries and featuring 82 times for the ODI side, as well as enjoying a 17-year career with Surrey.
His final Test appearance came in June 2005 before he was omitted from that summer’s victorious Ashes series and called time on his international career.
The inquest continues.
This story was first published in The Sun and is repordcued with permission.
Originally published as Star cricketer asked wife to help him end life
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