The young cricketer had a role play when England floored the Aussies during last year’s Ashes tour. A 134 for Essex in a side game against a fierce Aussie attack meant Bopara, who has had a long stint with the England A and under-19 national squad, was ready for the big stage.

And that’s something many at the World Cricket Academy (WCA) at the Cricket Club of India in Mumbai, where Bopara has had two stints, vouch for. WCA director Sachin Bajaj recalls the friendly guy who was a livewire on the field. “It was a real pleasure to know him. The late Hanumant Singh was his mentor and he spoke very highly of him,” he says.

“A top-order batsmen, a brilliant fielder and an occasional bowler, too. He isn’t a slam-bang player but someone who can play in the gaps,” says Bajaj. It is a description that his coach at Essex, Graham Gooch, agrees with. The former England opener has called him a player who “fits the bill of the modern cricketer — talented with the bat, brilliant in the field and a useful medium pacer in one-day cricket”.

Guru Greaves ranks Puppy’s professionalism high. “He told me once that his father had a tough time waking him for school. But on cricket days, it was Bopara who used to wake his father.”