A year ago Graham Napier was contemplating a career change. A World Cup winner ten years earlier at under-19 level, the Essex all-rounder had slipped from a bright young thing to a journeyman. He watched the auction of players for the first Indian Premier League (IPL) and wondered whether he had a future in the game.

“I wasn’t even playing much first-team cricket for Essex,” Napier said. “I was 28, back in the second team and realistically looking at a life outside cricket. I had application forms for the police force and fire service and was planning to leave cricket. Then the Twenty20 Cup came round and I was in the right place at the right time.”

One year on, Napier is about to play in the second IPL for Mumbai Indians alongside the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and Sanath Jayasuriya.

The innings against Sussex that changed his life started, he admits, “a bit scratchily”. Pushed up to No 3 a week earlier on the advice of his team-mates, who thought he looked useful in the nets, Napier had made 64 runs in four innings for Essex. “If I failed, the opportunity for batting that high might not come again,” he said. But then the runs started to flow. “I saw something early, chanced my arm, connected and the ball sailed out of the ground,” he recalled. “I thought, ‘Right, let’s see what you can do.’ ” What he could do was score 152 runs, with a record 16 sixes. He then made 40 off 20 balls in the quarter-finals, again at the smallish Ford County Ground in Chelmsford, and a call from India came soon after.

While he is not receiving the six or seven-figure deals from Mumbai that some players are getting, those innings have made Napier substantially richer. He has been made available by Essex for Mumbai’s first six games, but has signed a two-year deal and could play for longer next year. “If I was playing for the full six weeks of the IPL, I’d get as much money as I’d earn out of a county season,” he said.

Napier is one of seven Englishmen in the IPL, although he is the only one not to have played for England at senior level. That could change. He has been named in a 30-man squad for the World Twenty20, which will be cut to 15 on May 1, the day he is due to return from the IPL.

“I’m particularly looking forward to playing with Tendulkar,” he said. “I’ll be listening to everything he’s got to say about the game. I might be able to teach him something as well.”

Napier won the Sky Sports Sixes League last season with 36 shots over the boundary in the domestic limited-overs competitions. He is the 12-1 favourite to retain the title, which is sponsored this year by The Times.

“Any shot that is straight down the ground and over the sightscreen is the best,” he said. “I’ve always tried to score at a run a ball or better and sometimes that has been my downfall. Of course, at Chelmsford there is also the river to aim for and a good shot is emphasised by a pleasing splash.”
Source – timesonline.co.uk