Ansari celebrates new contract as he and Best head to SA
Thursday 08 December 2011
Zafar Ansari will head to South Africa tomorrow, fresh from signing a new three year deal with CB40 Champions Surrey. The contract, which will run until the end of 2014, is a deserved reward for a breakthrough season in which Ansari featured heavily in all three forms of the county game. Discussing his new contract on Surrey TV, Ansari said, 'I'm absolutely delighted to have signed my contract. Going into last season, my goal was to secure my future for the next few years and that it is what I managed to do'.
Ansari, who starred for both the MCCU, taking five first innings wickets in the victory over his county, and the Blues, scoring a half-century at Lords, in 2011, continued, 'To come out of university, go straight into the side, make an impact and then break into the sides in the other two formats was an absolute dream and I couldn't be happier.'
Zafar will join his Blues and MCCU team-mate Paul Best, who flew to South Africa on Sunday, at a training camp for English Performance Programme players in Potchefstrom. The England under 19s are there, preparing for their tour of Bangladesh after Christmas, as are members of the ECB Fast Bowling Programme such as Boyd Rankin, Stuart Meaker and Nathan Buck.
Referring to the trip, Ansari told cucc.net, 'I'm very excited to be involved in an ECB overseas trip for the first time. I hope that in the 12 days I'm in South Africa I'll be able to glean what I can from the set up and integrate it into my training when I get back to Cambridge after Christmas. The trip also provides me with a great opportunity to impress coaches out there and I will put all my energy in to showing them what sort of cricketer I am while I am out there'.
Best, who himself had a successful 2011 season, becoming the first player to play English first class cricket for four teams (MCCU, Blues, Warwickshire and Northants) in the same season, commented on his first few days, adding, 'The training camp is very intense but the facilities are brilliant. There has been a lot of skill based training but there are some practise matches scheduled for the end of the trip. Some of the performance squads are here which gives us a great environment to train in, and facing them in the middle over the next few days should be a fantastic experience.'
Everybody at Fenners' wishes Paul and Zafar all the best as they look to take advantage of their latest opportunity to impress.
