Bopara wins Young Cricketer of the Year award

LONDON: Ravi Bopara was named as the Young Cricketer of the Year for 2008 by the British-based Cricket Writers' Club at an awards ceremony in central London.
    
Bopara, has enjoyed several fine performances since making his Test debut for England in Sri Lanka in December.
    
In June, he became the first Essex player to score a double century in one-day cricket, something not even England great Graham Gooch managed for the eastern county, when he made 201 not out against Leicestershire at Grace Road in a Friends Provident Trophy quarter-final for the eventual winners.
    
That innings, which featured 10 sixes and 18 fours, propelled Bopara back into Test contention and he was recalled to the squad when Michael Vaughan resigned the captaincy last month.
    
Bopara, beaten to the award by Yorkshire leg-spinner Adil Rashid last year, has won three Test caps and appeared in 28 one-day internationals.
    
So far this season, Bopara has scored 1,046 runs and taken 25 wickets in 11 first-class matches.
    
Other candidates for the 58-year-old award, voted for by the membership of the Cricket Writers' Club included Bopara's England colleague Stuart Broad, winner in 2006, and Kent batsman Joe Denly.
    
Recipients have to be England qualified and under the age of 23 on May 1 of the season in question to be eligible for the award.
    
Previous winners include England greats Ken Barrington, Geoffrey Boycott, Alan Knott, Ian Botham and David Gower.
    
Andrew Flintoff, Owais Shah, James Anderson, Ian Bell and Alastair Cook are among the current Test players to have lifted the trophy.