There is a physical education teacher in London, Philip Dawes, for whom the extraordinary deeds of Ravi Bopara are not the stuff of excited chatter. Dawes, who taught Bopara for four years at Brampton Manor School, receives breathless bulletins concerning England's No3 batsman with wisdom's slow smile.
"He was a different shape then, round and chubby with puppy fat," he recalls. "But he was a lovely lad, never a problem, and not too much has changed. Even at 13 he was very impressive, very unusual. He had these leadership qualities. He was always helping out younger boys. He was obviously well brought up, confident and very honest but respectful, not cocky.
"By the time he was 15 he was incredible. This is not a cricket school. It has a big football history. But he won the 40-over Essex Cup almost single-handedly, captaining the side and scoring a big hundred to beat Graham Gooch's old school, Norlington, in the final."
Brampton Manor did not even have a cricket team when Bopara arrived. The player recalls: "I asked if we could play cricket and the answer was yes, if I could get some guys together. So we organized our own school team.
"We didn't go out and train or anything. We didn't have the facilities. We just rocked up on the day and went out and enjoyed ourselves. I had some good talented players around me. We had a community that loved cricket. We went on to win that cup which meant a lot to some of those guys and the teacher as well."
The teacher admits he didn't have much to do with it. "Ravi ran the whole show, picking the team, settling on the batting order, leading from the front, everything," Dawes says. "I was there to umpire and help out but Ravi did it all. I have never seen a schoolboy field as well as he did. He bowled medium pace and spin and as a batsman he was exceptional. He had all the power and technique to take bad bowling apart. But what really impressed me for such a young lad was his shot selection."
Sir Robin Wales, the mayor of the borough of Newham, where most of the 2012 Olympic Games will take place, said yesterday: "From an early age at Brampton Manor it was always obvious that Ravi was destined for great things."
Bopara, however, had fixed his mind on cricket many years before he attended Brampton Manor. From the age of seven or eight he would rush home from school at three in the afternoon, change in a hurry and dash out, climbing over gates to play tapeball cricket in a small local playground.
That is the sort of intensity of desire Australia's bowlers will be up against in Cardiff next week. But they already know a little about him, for he hit 135 against them, with 17 fours and two sixes, while playing for Essex, just before the crucial Oval Test of 2005. Bopara put on 270 with Alastair Cook, who was also 20 at the time, in a match that ended in a draw.
In the same year Essex sent him to Paul Terry's academy in Perth. For Terry, Bopara's "nice sort of arrogance" and his determination to test himself against the best bowlers available made him the stand-out talent from England in seven or eight years.
Bopara became an Essex player in 2002. Even Gooch, the old workaholic, had to remind him that he was practising too hard on occasions. Bopara remembers: "I had the keys to this indoor school in Ilford, so I could go there any time. Sometimes I would go at one in the morning, along with my mate Zoheb Sharif, who was also on the Essex staff at the time.
"The only time I could find a time to myself was really late. I didn't want to get up in the morning. I'm not really a morning person. It was a case of making use of my day and training at night. It became routine. Zoheb and I used to roll out the carpet and use the bowling machine. Graham [Gooch] said it was a bit silly going at that time but I told him that was the only time when I was wide awake!"
It was in the indoor nets at Chelmsford that Bopara, at 16, had first impressed Gooch. "I just knew, even then, that I was watching a very special player," said the former England captain. "There were a lot of rough edges in those days but I just knew ... the way he carried himself, his balance, the time he had to play his shots, the way he moved, generally, in a smooth and silky way. I just knew that this was something special."
Bopara's wristy play reminded John Childs, the Essex academy director who once played for Gloucestershire, of Zaheer Abbas. "That gives you so many more scoring options," he says. "Ravi always had a natural gift. You just had this gut feeling that you were watching somebody with something more special than other people. And, of course, he's always had this immense hunger to learn."
The England management were sufficiently beguiled by his qualities to fast-track him into the England side in Sri Lanka just over 18 months ago, ahead of the more deserving Owais Shah. Bopara finished the series with three ducks in a row. But this year, against West Indies in the Caribbean and in England, he has balanced out that embarrassment by scoring three successive centuries.
"I'm glad some of this stuff has happened," he says. "I've been through a real low with the three noughts against Sri Lanka and now I've been through quite a high as well with the three hundreds. I'm glad it's happened this way. In my career it's been two extremes and I think you learn a lot from the extremes. A great deal has happened in those six matches.
"After the three noughts, immediately, within a few months, I knew I had become a better player. Just by experiencing the hurt. You take time and it hurts you for a while and then you go back into the nets and work out how you want to play. You realize you want to go out and enjoy it. I didn't enjoy those three noughts.
"They happened so quickly. I don't think I was playing badly. It's not as if I was scratching around to get to 10 or 20 or 30 and then getting out. It just went bang, bang, bang, three noughts. I didn't even get a chance to get in.
"Now I go out to enjoy myself. But I give myself the best opportunity to perform. I prepare well. I do everything I can to make sure I perform on the day and if it's my day I will perform, and if it's not it's not."
According to Bopara's England team-mate Paul Collingwood, he returned from the recent Indian Premier League tournament in South Africa, where he played for Kings XI Punjab, a different player. "Ravi came back a new man," the Durham batsman said. "Looking at the way he's holding himself at the moment, he's very calm. He just knows his game so well."
Now, as he prepares for a defining moment in his career, it is surprising to learn that this cricket-obsessed individual was oblivious to the unique importance of the Ashes until 2005.
"Before 2005 I didn't see the Ashes as such a massive series. It only hit me when we won it. Everything that came along with it was unbelievable and I thought, Jesus, this really is a big series, it really does mean a lot to everybody."
As the owner of two Rottweilers, Bopara should be able to muzzle the sledgers in the Australian side in the coming series. His ability to get away from the game – especially when you remember that he is such an obsessive about it – is impressive. He loves music too. And friends who don't know too much about cricket.
"Some of them might know I've scored a hundred but they won't really know who it's against. That works out well for me."
Ravi Bopara might soon discover that he has many more friends.
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