{"id":795176,"date":"2026-10-07T20:28:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T20:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/795176\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T20:28:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T20:28:16","slug":"shafiqullah-ghafari-durham-bowler-extends-contract-for-2027-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/795176\/","title":{"rendered":"Shafiqullah Ghafari: Durham bowler extends contract for 2027 season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Durham leg-spin bowler Shafiqullah Ghafari has signed a one-year contract extension to keep him at the club for the 2027 season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 24-year-old made 10 appearances in the One-Day Cup to help Durham reach the semi-final in the 2026 campaign.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He took career-best figures of 4-36 against Lancashire at Old Trafford in August and ended the season as the club&#8217;s leading wicket-taker in the competition with 16.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ghafari, who was born in Afghanistan but successfully claimed asylum in England, only featured once in Durham&#8217;s County Championship Division Two promotion success &#8211; in the final game against Lancashire.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But he also took 65 wickets in 23 games for Richmondshire in the North Yorkshire and South Durham Premier League in 2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I have enjoyed being part of this team over the last couple of years and contributing when I can,&#8221; Ghafari <a href=\"https:\/\/www.durhamcricket.co.uk\/news-and-media\/shafiqullah-ghafari-pens-one-year-contract-extension\/\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told the Durham club website., external<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It was great to play a part in the One-Day Cup and hopefully I can continue to take wickets for Durham across all formats into next season.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Durham leg-spin bowler Shafiqullah Ghafari has signed a one-year contract extension to keep him at the club for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":795177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-795176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/795177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}