Cricket: The new left-hand man: Simon O'Hagan meets Graham Thorpe, who aims to earn respect from the Australians

IT IS June 1988, and on a fine morning at The Oval, an 18-year-old medium-pace bowler, making his first-class debut for Surrey, is approaching the wicket. At the other end stands one of the greats of English cricket, bat poised, his innings just under way.

'It was about my sixth ball,' the bowler remembers. 'It wasn't anything special, but it must have hit some pigeon seed or something because it nipped back and got an inside edge on to his pad. I was so surprised that he didn't just smack it for four that I appealed anyway, and the umpire gave him out. I couldn't believe it.'

The batsman was DavidGower, the bowler Graham Thorpe - one of those conjunctions that meant nothing at the time but which now has more than a touch of piquancy. Thorpe did not bowl much after that. As Surrey, and eventually England, discovered, the man was really a batsman, and the feeling among many people in the game now is that he could become as exciting a left-hander as Gower was.

At 25, everything is coming together for Thorpe. The promise was always there, but it has taken longer to fulfil than was expected. Now, with 10 Tests under his belt, he is beginning to feel part of the England team, and look it too.

Thorpe is solid Surrey, born and brought up in Farnham, near the Hampshire border. He moved to Cheam three years ago, where he lives with his fiancee, whom he met in Dubai on a pre-season trip with Surrey. They are marrying next September.

For the young Graham, there was little but sport in his life. Like his father, who works in insurance, and his two older brothers, he was a football follower, and played the game, either in midfield or as sweeper, well enough to be picked for England Schools and offered trials at Brentford.

For a long time, that was his preferred sport, as he recalled at The Oval last week in between a holiday in Cyprus and leaving for Australia on Tuesday. 'I looked forward to football when the cricket season ended, and I looked forward to cricket when the football season ended. But I always finished the football season before starting to play cricket.'

Unusually for a professional sportsman, Thorpe says it never occurred to him that this was how he might earn a living, until Surrey offered him a contract when he was 18. 'My parents used to ask me what I was going to do, but I never knew,' Thorpe says. 'But I used to say to them, 'I'll be all right, I'll make something happen somewhere along the line.' '

He started to in his first full season - 1989 - when he scored 1,100 runs and earned himself a place on the England A tour of Zimbabwe. A brilliant future seemed to lie ahead. At the beginning of the 1990 season, in a survey by this newspaper, he was nominated by no fewer than 11 of the 17 county captains as the young player to watch.

These were some of the things being said about him: 'A determined young player with a lot of strokes' (Tony Brown of Gloucestershire); 'a very smooth striker with a lot of time and a certain maturity and confidence' (Nigel Briers of Leicestershire); 'a compact, punchy strokeplayer' (Paul Parker of Sussex). And so the wave of approval rolled on. The only trouble was it knocked Thorpe over, and he ended a disappointing season out of the Surrey team, almost back to square one. 'People knew a bit more about me,' he says. 'The freshness had gone.'

To the selectors' credit, they backed Thorpe's class, and included him in another A tour party - to Sri Lanka, where the home team rated him their most accomplished opponent. Then A tours started to become a habit. Thorpe went to the West Indies in 1991-92, to Australia in 92-93. Even then, he says, 'I didn't really wonder whether if I'd ever make it. I was enjoying it. And I learnt a lot in the process, playing on a lot of different types of wicket.'

This undoubtedly helped Thorpe develop his technically rounded game, the basis for which was already evident when Micky Stewart, then the Surrey coach, first saw Thorpe as a 13-year-old. 'He always looked special,' Stewart says. 'He read length quickly, and he hit the ball with the full face of the bat.'

Grahame Clinton, the present Surrey coach, describes Thorpe as essentially a back-foot player, his trademark shot being a whipped hook which speaks volumes for his assertiveness. At 5ft 10in, he is not small, but with his bat usually close to his body, the overall impression is one of compactness. Clinton likens him to Allan Border.

More striking even than Thorpe's natural ability is his mental approach. When he did finally make the full England team, for the third Test against Australia last year, he overcame the disappointment of scoring only six in the first innings by scoring an unbeaten hundred in the second - the first Englishman to do so on his Test debut since Frank Hayes 20 years previously.

It was an innings of square- jawed determination of a kind you do not often see by an England player. Thorpe ended the series with an average of 46, but perhaps the most significant statistic was that he only once lost his wicket to Shane Warne, whose effectiveness against left-handers is considerably reduced. In the battle against Warne this winter, the part Thorpe plays will be crucial. Thorpe's account of the Gower dismissal tells us a lot about his attitude. He respects opponents, but he is not in awe of them, and if he thinks he's got a chance then he'll take it with both hands.

Stewart sees it like this: 'The big problem I find with so many English cricketers is that you ask them how they've played and even if they've played really well, all they'll say is 'All right, I suppose.' If they've played badly they'll have no hesitation in telling you, 'I was rubbish.' But Graham's not like that. If he's played really well, he'll say just that, 'I played really well.' It's not arrogance. It's seeing things for what they are.' Clinton believes that 'what's unusual about Graham is he doesn't dwell on failure'.

Thorpe's resolve was tested at the start of this season when, in spite of coping well with the terrors of the West Indies during the winter, he found himself out of Ray Illingworth's new-look Test team, to the dismay of his many admirers. 'The chairman explained to me that they wanted to try things with just five batsmen, and I was the unlucky one. I just told myself I had to become one of the five best batsmen in the country. The way I look at it you have to get over hurdles all the time.'

Thorpe was out of the side for four Tests - all three against New Zealand, and the first against South Africa - before getting another chance. And suddenly we saw rather more than solidity and the odd flash of aggression. In three successive innings - 72, 73, 79 - Thorpe carried the attack to the South Africans, adhering to his belief that 'when the time is right to take the initiative, then that's what you should do, even if it's a bit of a gamble'. The results were so spectacular that the only criticism Thorpe came in for was that these scores weren't a lot bigger. He accepts that he was at times guilty of over-confidence - not a problem many England batsmen have suffered from in recent years.

Thorpe and Australia seem made for each other. He did well on his A tour there, top-scoring with an average of 53.75, and relished the competitiveness. 'There was a lot of aggression on the pitch. But if you're given some stick, I don't see there's any harm giving some back so long as it doesn't upset your concentration. But nothing really bothers me.'

Perhaps this is Thorpe's secret - he's not really English at all, he's an Aussie. He certainly seems to have many of their traditional virtues. Australians, of course, have difficulty respecting England cricketers. But with Graham Thorpe they may just have to make an exception.

(Photograph omitted)