Jamal Adrian Richards (born 3 March 2004) is an English cricketer who plays for

Essex County Cricket Club Essex County Cricket Club is one of eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Essex. Founded in 1876, the club had minor county status until 1894 w ...

. He is a right-handed batsman and right arm fast medium pace bowler.

Early life

From

Edmonton, London Edmonton is a town in north London, England within the London Borough of Enfield, a Districts of England, local government district of Greater London. The northern part of the town is known as Lower Edmonton or Edmonton Green, and the southern ...

, Richards attended Norlington School in

Waltham Forest The London Borough of Waltham Forest () is an outer London borough formed in 1965 from the merger of the municipal boroughs of Leyton, Walthamstow and Chingford. The borough's administrative headquarters are at Waltham Forest Town Hall, wh ...

. He was introduced to cricket aged four by his Jamaican grandfather Franklin Dickson, who would take him to the cricket club in

Walthamstow Walthamstow ( or ) is a town within the London Borough of Waltham Forest in east London. The town borders Chingford to the north, Snaresbrook and South Woodford to the east, Leyton and Leytonstone to the south, and Tottenham to the west. At ...

. He started playing age-group cricket with Essex in 2016, at eleven years-old. He represented London and the East of England at the Bunbury Cricket Festival in 2019.

Career

Richards made his Second-XI debut for Essex in 2021 and signed a rookie contract with the club in early 2022. He made his debut in

List A cricket List A cricket is a classification of the limited-overs (one-day) form of the sport of cricket, with games lasting up to eight hours. List A cricket includes One Day International (ODI) matches and various domestic competitions in which the num ...

for Essex on 5 August 2022, against

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It borders Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire to the north, Nottinghamshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south-east, Staffordshire to the south a ...

at Chelmsford, with Richards top-scoring in the Essex innings with 46 from 44 balls. At the 2022 Essex end of season awards Richards won the first XI young player of the year award. He signed a new contract with Essex in February 2023. Speaking soon after this, Richards said that he is focused on playing all formats of the game. Richards made his

first-class cricket First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is of three or more days scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officially adju ...

debut on 26 May 2023 as Essex played against

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

at Chelmsford. He took 5-96 on debut. Richards was the leading wicket-taker for Essex in the 2024 One-Day Cup with 15 scalps at an average of 24.86 and was rewarded with a new one-year contract in November that year. In May 2025, he was called into a County Select XI to play the touring Zimbabwe national team in Leicester.

Style of play

all-rounder An all-rounder is a cricketer who regularly performs well at both batting and bowling. Although all bowlers must bat and quite a handful of batsmen do bowl occasionally, most players are skilled in only one of the two disciplines and are cons ...

, Essex Cricket head coach

Anthony McGrath Anthony McGrath (born 6 October 1975) is an English cricket coach and former first-class cricketer, who played county cricket for Yorkshire County Cricket Club from 1995 to 2012. He was a right-handed batsman and bowled part-time right-arm mediu ...

was quoted in 2023 as saying that during his debut season Richards had displayed “moments of brilliance when featuring in our One-Day Cup side...Jamal is one of the brightest talents on the County circuit. He has raw pace with ball in hand and can hit it a long way with the bat too."

International career

He played for England national under-19 cricket team and England Lions against Sri Lanka and Australia in the winter of 2022-2023.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Richards, Jamal 2004 births Essex cricketers Cricketers from the London Borough of Enfield Cricketers from the London Borough of Waltham Forest English cricketers Living people Bedfordshire cricketers Kent cricketers 21st-century English sportsmen