Graham Thorpe has always dealt in economy of deed, and economy of word, too. The swivelled pull, the crisp square cut, the punched drive through the on side, shots played without flourish or embellishment.

They have not just been the hallmark of his batting down the years, along with the clipped quote, they have also marked out his emotional boundaries. Until yesterday.

Yesterday at The Oval we saw a new Thorpe, a man who thrust his arms ecstatically into the air as he completed his 100th run, who pulled off his helmet to reveal a rugged, smiling face of contentment — at last, a man at peace.

With his headband and unshaven chin, he looked less like a cricketer than a climber arriving at the summit of Mount Everest. “I felt like I was climbing a mountain,” he admitted. “I was dragging myself off the floor, having the belief to enjoy life again and enjoy my cricket again. People are afraid of making a fool of themselves in life, but it’s better to try and fail than not to take the opportunity. It’s the biggest thing to get over. The fear of failure.”

Thorpe has earned the right to enjoy the view. When he announced himself fit and ready for selection for the Ashes tour last winter after pulling out of a trip to India and an unhappy self-inflicted exit from the home series, the whole cricketing family breathed a sigh of relief. Their prodigal son was back, and the Australians would pay the price of his absence.

But Thorpe had deceived himself. Still wracked by the personal traumas of an acrimonious divorce, he withdrew from the Australian tour, and, by widespread consent, forfeited an international career that still fell tantalisingly short of greatness. There could be no way back now, not from such brazen flouting of the rules. Nobody knew better than Thorpe himself how daft his indecision looked, how arrogant and self-absorbed. He was a professional cricketer, and he was turning down a chance bequeathed to very few.

Thorpe, not as unsentimental a man as he sometimes seems, knew what people thought, and on Friday, every one of those perceptions would have shadowed him to the wicket. The Oval, home for all his cricketing life, must have seemed like a foreign country. If very few players get the chance to make two Test debuts, even fewer score centuries in both. “That was better than making a century on my debut,” said Thorpe. “When you get a little bit older and you have gone through a few things . . . ” The sentence was left unfinished.

Thorpe’s 124 will be a mere footnote at the end of a series forfeited, in all probability, by the ineptness of England’s cricket at Headingley in the fourth Test and again on the opening day here. Despite a record third-wicket partnership of 268 between Thorpe and Marcus Trescothick, which lasted from late on Friday afternoon until mid-afternoon yesterday, England have left themselves too much to do to force the win that would level the series.

In truth, they deserve nothing from this series, and, in the sunshine of the past two days, there has been plenty of time to wonder at the peculiarities of the selectors’ thinking this summer. Every team sheet without the name of G Thorpe on it would have been greeted with silent rejoicing in the South African dressing room, and dismay in the home team. Trescothick admitted as much at the end of the second day of this final npower Test when, with England precariously placed at 78 for two, he reflected on the comforting arrival of that familiar squat figure, selected only as a replacement for the injured Nasser Hussain.

Imagine, too, the reaction of the South Africa fielders. Though very different fom Viv Richards, Thorpe’s appearance at the wicket demands similar attention: not the fear of humiliation induced by Richards’s hip-rolling saunter, but the promise of an afternoon of hard slog.

So it proved. For five hours and 15 minutes, the South Africa bowlers beat their heads against the brick wall of Thorpe’s bat. His defence was as undemonstrative as ever, a matter of necessity rather than desire. One by one, Thorpe dispatched his inhibitions; one by one, he retrieved the shots that had brought him 11 Test centuries and a Test average fractionally above the magical mark of 40. Two, in particular, alerted a full house that all was well in Thorpe’s complex psyche. The first came in the 49th over of the innings as Shaun Pollock, in the midst of a testing spell from the Vauxhall End, dropped fractionally short. A quick swivel of the hips, a crack of the bat, and the ball was speeding to the midwicket boundary. Minimum effort, maximum command. Nothing advertised Thorpe’s return with greater force, unless it was Jacques Kallis’s petulant flick of the ball at the stumps as Thorpe prodded it back to him in mid-afternoon, proof that his ability to get up the noses of the opposition has remained intact too.

On 252 for two, Paul Adams also dropped short. At wide mid-on, Makhaya Ntini anticipated some more work. You could tell from his movement that he thought he had the angle of interception covered. He was not the first, nor will he be the last to realise too late that Thorpe’s power comes from a deceptively short backlift and iron wrists. In the 15 months since he left Lord’s a disconsolate and exhausted figure, neither strength has been lost. “There’s a certain amount of doubt when you come back like this,” he admitted. “The question is whether I would be able to wipe out the memory of that last Test. I’ve exorcised a few demons here.”

As he reached 100, Thorpe pumped the air and turned, helmet and bat aloft, to be embraced by his equally impressive partner. “There were times when I questioned whether I wanted to play at this level again,” he said later. “Was it worth it? When I scored 100 in Christchurch it was quite emotional, but here a lot of things were going through my mind. I feel like I’m back on a level playing field in life again, and I sensed that people were behind me, which made me feel a bit more nervous. It’s been a while since I’ve had an ovation like that. I feel I’ve achieved again.”

When Kallis finally rammed a ball through Thorpe’s defences, England were closing in on South Africa’s total.

The Oval stood and applauded. They were appreciating a great innings, but mostly they were marking the very public re-assembly of a life.