The comparisons have begun already. When Joe Sayers carried his bat against Durham at Headingley in April to make 149 out of a Yorkshire total of 414 in nine hours and 13 minutes, the references to Geoff Boycott in next day’s reports felt as inevitable as one of the old master’s forward defensives. Not that this will have displeased believers in the white rose: in a county that regards Boycott as a deity, they are always alert to the possibility of a second coming.

“It’s a compliment to be associated with him,” says the 23-year-old Sayers. “But at the same time I’m Joe Sayers. Comparisons aren’t always as accurate as we think they are. I’m looking to develop a game that is unique to me.”

He is certainly doing that. Two games after defying Durham - an innings which the Yorkshire batting coach, Kevin Sharp, says his teammates “loved” - the left-handed Sayers knuckled down for a further seven hours and 39 minutes to make 123 against Worcestershire. And for those who say he bats too slowly, the proof was in the Yorkshire pudding: both games were won, in Durham’s case with a day to spare. If the likes of Younis Khan and Jacques Rudolph put more bums on seats, Sayers was every bit as instrumental in putting Yorkshire on top of the county championship after five matches.

“He’s the ultimate professional,” says Sharp, who has worked closely with Sayers since returning to Yorkshire to join the coaching staff five years ago. “He’s very conscientious, he knows what his role is and he’s very gutsy. There aren’t many around like him in the modern game, people who can bat for sessions at a time. It’s invaluable to have somebody who is so hard to get out.”

To listen to Sayers’s account of his self-denial masterpiece against Durham is to hear a player who is totally at ease with his game. “We were facing a sharp attack of Steve Harmison, Graham Onions and Ottis Gibson,” he says. “I’d come up against Shoaib Akhtar against Worcestershire, and he was somewhere near Harmison’s pace, but he didn’t have his bounce. It was the most hostile spell I’ve faced.

“Our plan was to take them into their third and fourth spells and then score runs off the others. It was a long-winded way of taking them on, but it paid off.” Harmison finished with figures of 37.3-9-87-6 and Yorkshire won by nine wickets. Martyn Moxon, the county’s director of cricket, said the battle between Harmison and Sayers was like a Test match.

In an age where international sides are disappointed if they score fewer than 300 runs in a day, not many young openers with England ambitions would be prepared to graft for a living (Sayers’s career strike rate in first-class cricket is 39.37). But it is a role that Yorkshire, replete with middle-order stroke-makers, are encouraging. It is also a role his career seems to have been preparing him for.

Born in Leeds and brought up in nearby Otley, Sayers learned his trade on what he calls “typically slow northern wickets”, opening for Yorkshire schools from the age of 12, playing league cricket for Guiseley and then moving to the Yorkshire academy at 15. It was not long before he was skippering England under19s. In the latest edition of Wisden he is touted as a possible future captain of his county, a claim that might have been helped by an innings he played against Middlesex at Scar-borough late last summer when he became the first Yorkshire left-hander to carry his bat since Bryan Stott in 1959. His seven-hour knock of 122 out of a total of 326 was typical Sayers.

He also developed some backs-to-the-wall steel during his time as captain of Oxford University, when the students desperately needed a bulwark against the county bullies. Asked whether his degree in physics - he finished with a 2:1 at Worcester College - helps him assess the angles that are so crucial to the lifespan of the left-handed opener, he jokingly concedes it can’t have done him any harm.

His education did not stop there. During the winter, Sayers spent time in South Africa with the London County Cricket Club and met up with Boycott, who has a home in the republic and might just have spotted a kindred spirit. “He pointed out that one of the most important things for a top-order batsman, especially a left-hander, is an aware-ness of where your off stump is,” says Sayers. “He spoke about getting the angles right and lining up the bowlers, and about the importance of developing the ability to leave the ball well and be patient. After a while, bowlers will start to drift on to your pads. He sent me a letter in the spring and we’re in touch via email. He’s showing a keen interest.”

Boycott’s patronage is just part of the impressive network of pastoral care Sayers can call upon at Headingley. He singles out Steve Oldham, who works with Yorkshire’s academy as well as with their fast bowlers, and says the arrival at the club of Moxon, a technically accomplished opening batsmen in his time, has helped too.

Then there’s Michael Vaughan, who has already spoken to Sayers about taking his game to the next level. Vaughan himself was inspired several years ago by Darren Lehmann, who encouraged him to look for more quick singles, and Sayers admits it is a strategy he has “looked into in recent weeks”.

And while he is keen to add to a risk-averse repertoire of strokes, including a leg-side nudge off the hip that encouraged the Surrey captain Mark Butcher this week to compare Sayers with the former England opener John Edrich, he is content to fit into the needs of the team and cement a regular place in only his second full season of county cricket.

Sharp, though, is confident higher honours await. “Succeeding at Test level is not just about playing cricket but handling other demands, from the crowds, TV and the press,” he says. “Joe’s a very intelligent, balanced fellow, and he’d have no difficulty dealing with it.

“He’s very mature and has a very good cricket brain as well as being an academic. His efforts would be priceless in five-day cricket.” It sounds like music to Boycott’s ears.

Yorkshire’s stonewallers

Geoff Boycott Few batsmen have based a long and successful Test career around a forward defensive, but Boycott managed 8,114 runs in 108 matches. His teammates did not always appreciate his efforts: Ian Botham deliberately ran him out in Christchurch

Brian Bolus Represented Yorkshire in 107 fi rst-class matches between 1956 and 1962 before moving to Nottinghamshire, but established himself as a percentage-playing blocker with distinctive yellow pads that seemed almost as big as him

Edgar Oldroyd Described by one contemporary as ‘the best sticky-wicket batsman in the world’, the Batley-born Oldroyd averaged 35 in 384 matches between 1910 and 1931, but did it rather slowly. ‘Reliable and patient to the point of being dour and dogged,’ explains the book of 100 Yorkshire Greats