Not quite rising from the Ashes

I detect in Graham Thorpe's autobiography the ghost writer's trick of giving the subject enough rope with which to hang himself. "I've never been one for going out of the hotel and exploring local culture," says Thorpey, revealing an unappealing narrowness of mind. Staying in might make sense if you are playing at Abergavenny but it is a bit dumb to ignore the delights of Colombo or Sydney or Port-of-Spain.

Wilde's Thorpe sounds consistently authentic, perhaps a bit too much so as most of the book's 390 pages are devoted to blackening the name of his ex-wife Nicky.

It is called Rising from the Ashes in an attempt to ride the current wave of popularity but Having Nothing Whatsoever To Do With the Ashes would have been more appropriate. Thorpe supports the dads' pressure group Fathers 4 Justice, so he could have been one of the 50-odd blokes dressed as Batman on the Saturday of the Edgbaston Test. But that would have been the closest he got to the white heat of battle.

Rising from the Ashes is a melancholy read; the stats at the end include a list of Thorpe's most memorable hundreds including, wistfully, the one he would dearly like to have made this summer against Australia.