It was the late ‘80s and English cricket was in disarray. So a man called William Greaves started a charity organisation in London called Capital Kids Cricket and during his initial years of working with primary schools in London’s not-so-privileged quarters, met a kid of Indian origin.

His name was Ravinder Bopara. And he wanted to be “England’s Tendulkar”.

The ambition did not touch Greaves as it wasn’t unusual for kids in little Bopara’s generation to wish to be like Tendulkar. But his enthusiasm did. And that seems to have proved enough to put him in the big league of English cricket.

More than a decade later, Bopara has become the first product of Greaves’s revival initiative to make it to the England squad — he has been named to replace Kevin Pietersen in the ongoing Commonwealth Bank tri-series in Australia. Pietersen is returning home with a broken rib.

Greaves today told The Sunday Express that he never expected the Indian kid would become Capital Kids’ mascot and be one of the most promising cricketer in England.

“He wanted to be England’s Tendulkar but now he has a task that is equally difficult — to replace Kevin Pietersen and tour Australia,” said Greaves. Despite England’s dismal show in the Ashes and the first one-dayer, Greaves doesn’t think it’s a trip to the slaughter house for his star student, who has been playing for Essex since 2002.

Bopara — known as Puppy in the dressing room — was born in 1985 in London in a Sikh family. His father Charanjit Singh Bopara was born in Punjab but moved to London as a boy.

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