Essex County Cricket Club is delighted to announce the signing of Australian International leg-spinner, Adam Zampa, for the duration of the 2018 T20 Blast.

The 25-year-old will join the Eagles from 1 July and will be available for Finals Day on 15 September, should Essex progress.

Zampa has played in 31 ODIs and 13 T20 Internationals for Australia, and represented franchises around the world, such as Melbourne Stars in the Big Bash and Rising Pune Supergiants in the IPL.

Somewhat of a one-day specialist, with vast experience of high pressure situations, the leg-spinner will bring quality and variety to Anthony McGrath’s squad.

Head Coach McGrath is thrilled to add Zampa to the ranks and said: “I have been keeping tabs on Adam for a while. He has the ability to spin the ball both ways and that mystery in the middle overs is something that we have been missing from our T20 side.

“Adam has done excellently in the Big Bash and IPL, and has also featured regularly in white-ball cricket for Australia, so we know we are bringing in someone of International quality.

“We have done our homework and leg-spin makes a real difference in T20 cricket around the world, but you don’t want to just bring in any leg-spinner. Adam is one of the best around at the moment and it is another outstanding signing for the Club.”

Zampa is equally excited to be heading to England for the T20 Blast and added: “I’ve always wanted to play County cricket and I’m looking forward to the opportunity to improve my skills in English conditions.

“I have heard great things about the Chelmsford crowd, and can’t wait to represent the Eagles in the T20 Blast.”

Essex’s Overseas signings are in partnership with Seven Investment Management, the Eagles’ Vitality T20 Blast official sponsor.

Essex County Cricket Club is pleased to announce Australian opening bowler, Peter Siddle, will join the County Champions for the first 5 Championship games of the season.

Siddle will complement Anthony McGrath’s bowling attack for the opening weeks of the 2018 season and will add vast experience at the highest level.

The 33-year-old has played 62 Tests, 17 ODIs and 2 T20 Internationals, taking a combined total of 229 wickets in all competitions for Australia.

Head Coach McGrath believes Siddle will be an excellent addition in the opening weeks of the season and said: “Peter is someone with proven quality at the highest level. He is vastly experienced and is a player who won’t just deliver on the pitch but will help our younger bowlers as well.

“He recently played in one of the best International teams around, and we are looking forward to picking his brains and seeing what else we can produce as a bowling unit with his help.

“Darren Lehmann spoke glowingly about him as a person and a bowler when I spoke to him recently, so we are looking forward to him joining us and making a real impact in the opening weeks of the season.”

Australian, Siddle, is looking forward to calling Chelmsford home for the opening weeks of the campaign and added: “I am delighted to sign for Essex. I have heard very good things about the Club and the quality of the playing squad and look forward to contributing strongly towards the title defence during the first few weeks of the season.

“I’ve enjoyed my previous experiences of County Cricket and can’t wait to get underway at Chelmsford.”

Essex’s Overseas signings are in partnership with Seven Investment Management, the Eagles’ Vitality T20 Blast official sponsor.

Tickets to see the County Champions in action are now on sale to Members online, so don’t miss your priority booking period!

The popular T20 Blast matches begin in July and Members can get their hands on tickets before they go on sale to the public in March – all from just £12 per game.

Members can now apply for their free tickets for this year’s Tourist match as India head to The Cloudfm County Ground.

Additional tickets for the Royal London One-Day Cup and County Championship games are available to purchase here.

If you haven’t bought your Membership yet, you can do so, and still take advantage of this exclusive priority period.

T20 Blast tickets are expected to be as popular as ever, so secure the best seats in the house to watch the Eagles and soak in the spectacle of a T20 under lights at The Cloudfm County Ground.

Anthony McGrath’s team look set to challenge on all fronts, and build on an extremely successful 2017 campaign, so make sure you are there to witness it!

Get your tickets | here.

Buy your Membership | here.

MCC has announced their line-up to take on County Champions Essex in the annual first-class Champion County Match in Barbados.

The day/night fixture, regarded as the traditional curtain-raiser to the English county season, will be played with the pink Dukes ball under floodlights across four days at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown. The match will take place between Tuesday 27 and Friday 30 March, and will follow the ECB North-South series.

Bajan and former West Indies fast bowler Fidel Edwards will lead the attack for MCC, with Daniel Bell-Drummond captaining the talented line-up.

24-year-old Bell-Drummond, who played in MCC’s 2014 victory over Durham in Abu Dhabi, has scored over 4,000 first-class runs for Kent since making his debut in 2011, and is approaching 4,000 runs in white-ball cricket over the same period.

The line-up also includes the vastly experienced former England all-rounder Paul Collingwood. The 41 year-old has spent the winter as part of England’s coaching set-up on the Ashes tour to Australia and is soon to begin his 22^nd year as a professional with Durham. Collingwood will have great memories of the Kensington Oval, having led England to their first ICC tournament victory on the ground, defeating Australia in 2010 to win the ICC World Twenty20.

Brett D’Oliveira, Sam Northeast and Sam Hain join Bell-Drummond in the batting line-up. Opener D’Oliveira enjoyed a strong 2017 season, helping Worcestershire to promotion to Division One of the Specsavers County Championship and Northeast, who played in the 2013 Champion County Match against Warwickshire in Abu Dhabi, has made nearly 8,500 first-class runs for Kent and averages almost 40 after making his debut a decade ago.

Hain, who became the youngest Warwickshire batsman to score a first-class century in 2014, has since become a regular across all three formats for his county and hit an impressive half-century for MCC last summer against Afghanistan at Lord’s.

Emerging Sussex talent Delray Rawlins, who starred for England Under-19s in early 2017 with both bat and left-arm spin is included as an all-rounder, whilst Middlesex wicket-keeper/batsman John Simpson, who represented MCC earlier this winter in the Hong Kong Sixes, is behind the stumps.

Paceman Fidel Edwards, 35, has most recently been playing for Hampshire in the Specsavers County Championship and took his 350^th first-class wicket in the final game of the 2017 season. He took seven wickets in the match against Warwickshire at Edgbaston as he helped his side avoid relegation on the final day of the campaign.

Edwards will have seam support from exciting 20-year-old prospects George Garton and Matt Fisher. Garton, who was unexpectedly drafted in to the Ashes Tour party as cover in November, is a left-arm seamer who has earned recognition with both England Lions and the Under-19s, whilst right-armer Fisher was aged only 15 when he made his List A bow for Yorkshire in 2013.

The off-spinner Dom Bess, who took 6 for 21 on his Specsavers County Championship debut in 2016 to boost Somerset’s title challenge, completes the line-up after recently penning a new two-year contract at Taunton.

MCC Head of Cricket John Stephenson said: “This is a young, talented and exciting team which we’re very much looking forward to seeing take on Essex, and gaining exposure to the longer format of day/night cricket.

“This group boasts plenty of experience, not in only county cricket but also with several of the England sides. We are lucky to have Paul Collingwood and Fidel Edwards with us who are vastly experienced players at both international and domestic level. I’m looking forward to seeing them both in action when they will be able to pass on some of their knowledge to the younger players in the side.

“MCC is delighted to be hosting the Champion County match in Barbados, continuing our collaboration with the ECB. We hope that this match will provide a platform for the iconic Kensington Oval to go on to host a day/night Test Match in the near future.”

Last season’s Champion County Match in Abu Dhabi, was a dramatic affair as 2016 County Champions Middlesex defeated MCC by one wicket, overcoming a 153-run first-innings deficit and a hat-trick from MCC’s Craig Overton.

MCC XI to play Essex at the Kensington Oval, Bridgetown, Barbados:

Essex stars Ravi Bopara, Ryan ten Doeschate and Ashar Zaidi will head to Hong Kong this weekend to take part in the Hong Kong T20 Blitz.

All-rounder Bopara will represent City Kaitak, alongside overseas stars Samuel Badree (WI), Rayad Emrit (WI), Sohail Tanvir (Pak), and Kyle Coetzer (Sco).

Club Captain ten Doeschate will appear for Hong Kong Island United in the quickfire tournament. He will be joined in the squad by overseas players, Kamran Akmal (Pak), Mohammad Irfan (Pak), David Wiese (RSA), Luke Ronchi (NZ) and  Hussain Talat (Pak),

Big-hitting all-rounder Ashar Zaidi will again feature for defending Champions, Kowloon Cantons, whom he helped clinch the inaugral Hong Kong T20 Blitz title in 2017.

This year’s tournament will be played from February 6-11 and will allow young Hong Kong cricketers to learn from some of the world’s greatest players.

Paul Walter is continuing a demanding workload as he shapes up for the 2018 season, a campaign in which he is determined to hold down a place in the Essex side in all formats of the game.

And the belief that the county hold in the all-rounder was illustrated recently when the player put pen-to-paper on a deal that has earned him a contract extension to the end of the 2019 term.

“It’s been pretty full-on since the end of last season,” the 23 year-old admitted. “I was involved in the England Pace Programme from the start of last November, then I went to Desert Springs for 5 days and I’ve also been spending a lot of time up at Loughborough.”

The Basildon-born player was recently named, along with fellow Essex stars Dan Lawrence and Jamie Porter, as a member of the South squad for the three-match 2018 North-South series to be played in Barbados in March.

“It was a real pleasant surprise to get selected and hopefully, I can make my mark on the series and maybe put my name in the hat for selection for the Essex game against the MCC that follows,” said the left-arm bowler.

“Things have been going really well for me in the last couple of seasons, I think I did okay in the one-day matches I played last year and I’m hoping to re-create that and go on to better things in 2018. I made a few worthwhile contributions but the target ahead of me is to be more consistent in my all-round game in white ball cricket and carry that over into Championship cricket.

“I don’t want to be considered as primarily a one-day player, I want to embrace all forms of the game. In a bid to achieve that, I’ve been doing a lot of work including my skills and disciplines in the red-ball game. Hopefully, that will transfer into the season and I can get myself into consideration for all formats and have a good season across the board.”

The 6’8” player has made giant strides since first being introduced into the Essex side during 2016. He made 7 appearances in the T20 side that season, before earning his Championship debut in the away clash against Derbyshire where he showed his burgeoning all-round abilities with an unbeaten 47 and four wickets as Essex stormed to an innings victory.

Reflecting on his rapid rise, he acknowledged that it has been a personally productive time. “With all the talent we have around the Club, I felt it was an achievement in itself just to get selected in the first place. But then you have to prove yourself.

“Its been a really two good years for Essex having won promotion in 2016 and then the title last year and I’ve been delighted to get opportunities to be a part of those successes but you always have to be ready to grasp those chances when they do come along and do  yourself justice.”

Having made the transition from club cricketer to the professional game so comfortably, the paceman who packs a punch with the bat had faith in his ability to make the upward curve.

“I always believed that I could make the professional ranks and I know that I have a lot more to give because I’m still learning so much but I will admit that I’m a little surprised by how quickly things have happened for me. I’ve been lucky enough to get my chance and also fortunate enough to steer clear of injuries.

“My height does offer me something that few bowlers have, there are not too many 6’8” bowlers around bowling fast and so that works in my favour. But I’m always working on new skills and ideas; batsmen get to know about you and so it’s always harder in your second or third full year on the circuit but I think I can cause batsmen a few more surprises.

“I’ve worked really hard in the last couple of years and put in so many hours training and working on my game and for me, that’s a key to where I am at present but I know that I’ve still a long way to go.

“I’ve been able to see the importance of it all and it gives me the belief that I can get a lot, lot better. That’s what I’m striving to do, not only this winter but over the next few years or however long that I’m lucky enough to play the game.

“It’s been excellent to have the opportunities that I’ve been afforded this winter through the ECB Pace Programme, and the time at Desert Springs and now with the selection for the North-South series.

“I’m really looking forward to the next few months, I’m back on the Pace Programme in South Africa for a couple of weeks,  have four days again in Desert Springs and more winter training with Essex before I’m off to Barbados.

“Hopefully I’ll come back a better player. I’m happy with the technical side of my game, I feel in good shape physically and I’m looking forward to getting out on the pitch and showing what I can do.”