Thorpe's clock ticking

By Oliver Brett
BBC Sport

I'm here to enjoy myself and express myself for the good of the team Graham Thorpe

Both through his cricket and in his private life, Graham Thorpe has given England's scoop-hungry printed media much more than his fair share of headlines.

But whereas his cricketing exploits, whether from Karachi, Colombo or The Oval, have so often commanded the very highest praise, his personal deeds have usually spurned rather more sour language.

It is an irony to find Thorpe, now 34, looking somewhat sheepish under a baseball cap in England's team hotel at Gatwick on the eve of their departure to the Caribbean.

The man who has tasted so much of cricket's varied platter - and one of only three survivors from the previous visit to the West Indies - lacks the confident swagger that the young fast bowlers Matthew Hoggard and Steve Harmison possess.

But somewhere one senses a steely reserve within - a real desire to hit his very best form in the Caribbean - despite his belief that it is important to be philosophical about both life and cricket.

"My life over the past year has hopefully demonstrated that my state of mind is very much focused on cricket," he tells BBC Sport.

"If my cricket career is like a big clock I am in the last 15 minutes of it now and I'm here to enjoy those 15 minutes.

"I want to pass on as much of the expertise that I have onto the younger players and be philosophical about life to a profession that can take cricket very seriously sometimes.

"But the desire to do well and to win is still as big as it ever has been."

GRAHAM THORPE FACTFILE Born: Farnham, Surrey, 1.8.69 Scored 114* on Test debut v Australia, Nottingham, 1993 Stats: 5,552 runs in 83 matches at an average of 42.06 with 12 centuries

But just how many more winters and summers will Thorpe's final 15 minutes at the crease entail?

"It all depends on how I go out and play, and on other players in the domestic structure and the people above me who decide these things.

"Personally I think I would always know when the time had come but I'm here to enjoy myself and express myself for the good of the team."

Returning to the West Indies for his third tour out there brings a special excitement for Thorpe.

"It's a place where they embrace cricket a great deal," he says.

"It's a lot of fun - there's a carnival atmosphere at a lot of the grounds, a lot of reggae music going and it's just a great play to play cricket.

"We haven't won out there before but we have played in some fantastic matches out there and I think this will be a closely-fought series."

In the terminally slow Tests in Sri Lanka before Christmas, England never had a chance to get their foot on the gas.

Thorpe has been, without doubt, England's classiest batsman over the past decade or so From Jiminy Cricket Have your say on TMS

Thorpe hopes things will be different for England now against a raw bowling attack and on pitches he thinks have lost much of their pace.

"When we do get ourselves into an opportunity to take an advantage we are going to have to do just that," he says.

And while he is in the last 15 minutes of his cricketing career, England will hope they can get as much out of Thorpe as possible.