The Grade Cricketer is a pen name for an Australian comedy troupe who focus on sport, particularly cricket. The troupe write books, create video and audio podcasts, do live sports commentary, as well as interviews and live shows. The currently active members are Sam Perry and Ian Higgins. Dave Edwards was part of the team until 2020. They were friends who played 1st and 2nd grade cricket in Australia and began a Twitter account as @gradecricketer, whilst promoting their mantra âÂÂquit cricket, get massiveâÂÂ. They subsequently wrote books and columns and host a podcast.
The Grade Cricketer Podcast is presented by the team during the Australian cricketing summer, and is a comedic, satirical take on the cricketing world. There have been eight seasons since the promo episode was released in October 2016. Music is provided by Adrian Leung, with cover design by Julia Dowe. The podcast is released in both audio and video formats.
Episodes often include guest interviews, and the format regularly involves one interview with a cricket journalist, and a further one later on with a current or former player. These always begin with some form of the question "What's your relationship with Grade Cricket?"; whilst the player interviews end with throw-downs, in which the presenters ask ridiculous, long-winded questions, to which the guest can often respond only with a binary yes/no answer. The most frequent guests, also known as "best friends of the show", are Adam "Collo" Collins from the journalism world, with ten appearances, and Ed "Ted" Cowan from the players with six (also the first guest, having to re-record his interview after a technical mishap - this has now occurred twice).
The last section of the podcast normally involves answering questions submitted to The Grade Cricketer via social media, (the Twitter hashtag being #askTGC, hence the name). These questions are often incredibly long, leading Higgins to sometimes refer to the section as their "short story competition", but also sometimes little more than a statement followed by "thoughts?", and regularly concern topics such as alpha-ing, father-son relationships, social status within clubs/teams, retirement from the game, and other general advice relating to the world of amateur cricket.
Over the course of the podcast run, advertisements for various products, both real and imaginary tie-in ones, have been inserted, voiced by Toby Shain and, occasionally, the hosts themselves. Products include:
In 2018, The Grade Cricketer on 7 show was launched on 7Sport's YouTube channel. The season covered the 2018/19 summer of cricket and featured 11 episodes featuring all of the trio. In 2019, The Grade Cricketer on 7 was moved to 7plus for season 2 covering the 2019/20 summer of cricket; season 2 was only presented by Ian Higgins and Sam Perry.
The Grade Cricketer has presented live shows over multiple Australian summers and the English summers of 2019 and 2023, covering the 2019 World Cup and the 2019 and 2023 Ashes. The live shows, like the podcasts, usually feature guests.
In 2024, they hosted a live show with guest Ravi Shastri in New York City during the 2024 ICC Men's T20 World Cup.
Many terms have been popularised through the books and podcast efforts of The Grade Cricketer. These include:
Other terms commonly used, particularly in the AskTGC correspondence section of the podcast, include: