It doesn’t take much, apparently, to get the English press to write paeans about young sportpersons. The latest to make the headlines is 18-year-old Essex all-rounder Ravinder Singh Bopara, who’s just scored one of the most high-profile 48s you’ll ever hear of. Playing against Middlesex in the Frizzer Championships, Bopara played a defiant innings over three hours to give the Essex total some degree of respectability after he and Graham Napier got together at 78 for eight. Bopara’s innings — off 130 deliveries, with two fours including a supposedly Tendulkar-esque cover drive — has confirmed what a number of County observers have been saying for a while now: That the Player of Indian Origin is the best young cricketer seen at Essex for years. And had it not been for a direct hit from Ed Boyce when Bopara was trying to keep the strike with number 11 opposite him, his maiden first class 50 might have come up. The latest PIO to hit the British cricket circuit — it’s raining PIOs — flopped big time when he went to Australia with the England Under-19s last year in his first season. But Essex, with its long history of PIOs in the line-up (Ronnie Irani is captain, Nasser Hussain senior pro), stuck with him and, if coach Graham Gooch is to be believed, the boy has a bright career ahead of him with Essex, both as batsman and change seamer. Incidentally, he was to have been water-boy on June 7 but for an injury to Irani. As a youngster, he was coached by former England leg-spinner Robin Hobbs. Hobbs, in an interview to the British press after the match yesterday said, ‘‘I have never worked with a youngster who has worked so hard at his game. He listens to and remembers absolutely every word you say to him and he has the talent to become a seriously good player.’’ Qualities, usually, of batsmen who choose doggedness over flamboyance, substance over style. With the English national team batting line-up as brittle as ever, maybe ‘blokes’ like Bopara, or indeed Bopara himself, could make the grade and do it successfully.
