Napier signs Essex extension

Graham Napier

Essex have announced that all-rounder Graham Napier has signed a two-year contract extension that will keep him at the club until the end of the 2007 season.

The 25-year-old all-rounder, whose previous deal was set to expire this year, will now stay with the club until 2007.

Napier, who has not played for two months due to a heel injury, said: “My current deal with Essex finishes at the end of this season so I am delighted to have signed a two-year extension to take me up to 2007.

“Essex is the place where I have played all of my cricket and I have no desire to leave.

“The offer was made to me at the start of the season and it has just been a matter of dotting the ‘i’s and crossing the ‘t’s.

With my injury this season the rehabilitation has been more important than the negotiations but I am pleased to have now put pen to paper.

“Hopefully I will be back on the field in the near future in order to justify the club’s faith in me.”

In 2003, Napier equalled the highest number of wickets taken by an Essex player in a one-day league campaign (33), and was then selected for the ECB National Academy tour of Malaysia and India in early 2004 while later in the same year he was picked in England`s preliminary 30-man squad for the ICC Champions Trophy.