Making the Grade

Australian comic cricketers arriving in Birmingham.

Australian cricket legend Merv Hughes and award-winning writers Gideon Haigh and Peter Lalor will join Aussie comics The Grade Cricketers at their Glee Club show on August 4th.

The Grade Cricketer is the pen name of three Australian cricket writers who started a cult twitter feed, which turned into a series of hit books, a TV show, and a regular satirical and comedic podcast. They have had two sell-out live tours around Australia, and are now heading to the UK for a run of performances to coincide with this summer’s Ashes series. The hilarious yet insightful tone of the podcast has gained a big following in the UK, and a second London show has already been added after the first date sold out within 24 hours.

As wide-eyed juniors, Dave Edwards, Sam Perry and Ian Higgins all dreamed of playing cricket for Australia one day. That was before they entered the harsh, dog-eat-dog world of Australian club cricket, where their hopes and dreams were swiftly extinguished; their cricketing careers subsequently laid to rest.

As a form of catharsis, ‘The Grade Cricketer’ was born: a desperate, delusional ‘everyman’ that thousands of middling amateur athletes from all over the world can relate to, even if they refuse to admit it publicly.

At each show they are joined by a special guest as they examine cricket’s greatest rivalry and attempt to hold a mirror to that dark, inescapable, intangible that binds them all: Australian Cricket Culture.

You can learn more about them at their website, follow the Twitter feed @gradecricket and buy tickets here