London, Apr 29 : England’s opener Alastair Cook has backed Ravi Bopara to replace injured all rounder Andrew Flintoff.

Flintoff is missing once again after knee surgery on Monday saw him laid up until the Twenty20 World Cup in June.

Bopara, who came in for Flintoff on the recent tour of West Indies, smashed a sparkling century in Barbados before being dropped for the final Test.

Bopara is the likely man at No. 6, and Cook believes that his county teammate can continue giving the selectors a headache, The Sun reports.

Jamaica (West Indies), Feb. 10: England opener Alastair Cook has said that he has not lost his appetite for making runs, and knows that he hasn't scored a Test hundred since December 2007.

"I haven't lost my hunger. There's no better feeling than scoring Test hundreds, you'd do it every day if you could. I probably get conscious when I get to 50 because I haven't done it for a while," The Sun quoted Cook, as saying.

London, Jan. 25 : Opener Alastair Cook has been named the vice-captain of the England Test cricket team for the Caribbean tour, suggesting that the England and Wales Cricket Board sees him as future captaincy material.

Essex batsman Cook, 24, has been chosen over the more experienced former one-day skipper Paul Collingwood. Collingwood is likely to be Strauss''s deputy in the one-dayers.