Ricky Ponting pays tribute to 'English legend' Graham Thorpe 

Ricky Ponting shared his heartfelt condolences for the late Graham Thorpe, who passed away earlier this week from an long-standing illness.

Ponting said he had interacted with Thorpe during their time at Surrey in 2013, when the Australian spent two months with the County side.

“I had a bit of interaction with him with my time at Surrey,” Ponting said in the latest episode of The ICC Review.

“Remembering my last year of first-class cricket, (I) was actually playing for Surrey and I only played maybe half a dozen first-class games.

“But I became a capped player at the Surrey County Cricket Club, which is something that I'm extremely proud of. And obviously thought he (Thorpe) was a Surrey legend, an English legend."

Ponting highlighted how Thorpe was widely recognised by some of the greats of the game, and touched on the connections the late England player had with his current colleagues in the commentary box.

“I've heard Wasim Akram describe him as the best left-hand batsman that he ever bowled to,” Ponting said.

“A lot of his English teammates called him ‘the little genius’ for how good he was. And some of the guys that I work with in the UK now were extremely close with him.

“I mentioned Alec Stewart before, he was the Director of Cricket and head coach at Surrey when I was there. Guys like Ian Ward that I work with at Sky played a lot with him at Surrey. Nasser (Hussain) and Athers (Michael Atherton) obviously were extremely close with him as well.”

Ponting, who closely felt the loss of Australian greats Shane Warne and Andrew Symonds in 2022 when they passed away within a months of each other, made sure to reach out to his English colleagues as soon as he heard the news of Thorpe’s passing.

“As soon as the news broke, I made sure I got on the phone to those guys straight away, because it's only a couple of years ago that it happened with me with Warney (Shane Warne) and Simmo (Andrew Symonds) and those guys,” said Ponting.

“It seems like this big world of cricket, but when you lose something like that, the cricket world really shrinks down and everyone looks after each other.

“It's just another one of those really, really sad days as far as the game of cricket is concerned.

“To his family and everyone close to him, think from everyone, it's not just me, but from everyone in Australia that had anything to do with Graham Thorpe, our deepest condolences go out to you all.”