Australian cricketer Alex Hepburn has been sentenced to five years in jail in the United Kingdom for raping a woman he found “dozing” in his team-mate’s bedroom.

In his sentencing remarks, judge Jim Tindal slammed the former professional cricketer’s “foul sexism” and “laddish behaviour” that saw him rape a sleeping woman like a “piece of meat”.

The victim, who cannot be identified, told the court she wrongly assumed Hepburn was his then-Worcestershire County Cricket Club team-mate Joe Clarke.

The woman, who had earlier had consensual sex with England Lions batsman, Clarke, at the flat he shared with Hepburn, was horrified when she realised she was in bed with the Australian, the jury heard.

Hepburn was part of a sexual conquest “game” he helped to set up on a WhatsApp group, where members would be rated on their performances in bed upon revealing details of their sexual encounters with women.

The judge described the contest, which had “fired up” Hepburn to sleep with the most women, as a “pathetic sexist game”.

“It demeaned women and trivialised rape – a word you personally threw around lightly.

“Only now do you realise how serious rape is.”

That night, on April 1, 2017, Clarke had “done nothing wrong”, having consensual sex with the woman, leaving her sleeping while he, feeling unwell, passed out in the nearby bathroom.

Hepburn arrived home, “alone, drunk and frustrated”, and “saw a chance” and attacked the woman, the judge said.

Judge Tindal told Hepburn he had “arrogantly” believed his victim would consent.

Addressing the cricketer, he said: “You thought you were God’s gift to women.

“You did see her at that moment as a piece of meat, not a woman entitled to respect.

“Sex is something people do together, with that particular person at that particular time.

“Sex is never something a man does to a woman, arrogantly assuming consent – in a relationship, let alone as you did.”

A jury had found Hepburn guilty of oral rape at a trial earlier this month, but cleared him of a further count of rape relating to the same victim.

Hepburn told jurors he had drunk the equivalent of 20 bottles of beer before he found the woman alone on a mattress at the flat he shared with Clarke.

Claiming he reasonably believed the woman had consented, Hepburn told jurors she had rolled over in bed, kissed him, and instigated “normal” consensual sex.

The judge praised the victim’s impact statement, describing it as “one of most articulate and powerful descriptions of rape I have ever read”.

In it, the woman Hepburn attacked described her ordeal as “evil” and a “heinous crime”.

Describing the impact on her physical and emotional health, she now suffered panic attacks, anxiety, and “violent anger outbursts”, and had struggled to hold down a steady job. She added she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Hepburn’s barrister, Michelle Heeley QC, said her client had expressed “true remorse”, had never set out to hurt anyone, and had received “death threats” following his conviction.

She added her client had been “very young and immature, at the time”, and “living a life – he accepts a privileged life – and to an extent, he abused that privilege.

“He has lost everything: his career, his good character and ultimately his liberty and how he comes back from that is a very difficult question,” Ms Heeley said.

-with AAP