APL Career
Joe Clarke arrives in the Afghanistan Premier League as one of Kandahar Warriors' two
Diamond picks, signed at the player draft in Dubai on 3 November 2026 for US$65,000.
He is a debutant in the competition: his name appears in none of the five squads from
the 2018 season, when he was a 22-year-old at Worcestershire, nine days past a T20
Blast title. Eight years later he walks into a brand-new Kandahar side — the Warriors
are a fresh club for 2026, not a continuation of the 2018 Kandahar Knights — as a
proven white-ball opener and wicket-keeper with more than 6,600 T20 runs behind him.
Kandahar's rebuild is led by captain Rashid Khan, with Ravi Bopara as head coach and
Irfan Pathan as mentor. Clarke's role in that set-up is clear: open the batting, keep
wicket, and give the top order the fast starts T20 cricket lives on. His record
suggests he will do it in bursts — four T20 hundreds, a strike rate above 140, and a
habit of turning a good start into a match-winning one, as Northamptonshire found out
when he made 136 off 65 balls in 2021.
The 2026 season starts on 27 December 2026 in the UAE, with the fixture list still to
be published. Clarke has no APL figures yet — the tables below will fill in once the
first ball is bowled. What he does bring is a career built on the biggest stages of
county and franchise cricket: two T20 Blast titles with two counties, a Big Bash
hundred, and a County Championship winners' medal with Nottinghamshire in 2025.
Playing style and strengths
Clarke is a right-handed top-order batter and wicket-keeper who opens in white-ball
cricket and bats high in the order in red-ball cricket. His game is built on clean,
360-degree hitting rather than slogging: the eleven sixes in his 136 against
Northamptonshire came from timing and a still head, not brute force, and his T20
strike rate sits above 140 across more than 270 matches. He scores fast without
looking rushed, and he is at his most dangerous in the powerplay, where his ability
to hit over the infield — and to punish anything short — sets the tone for the
innings.
Behind the stumps he is athletic and reliable — four catches on his PSL debut, 96 T20
catches and eight stumpings in his career — and his keeping gives a side the
flexibility to play an extra bowler or batter. Since 2024 he has captained
Nottinghamshire in the Blast, and Trent Bridge's own assessment is that he has grown
into the role: top run-scorer in his first summer in charge, second the next. The one
criticism that has followed him is red-ball inconsistency — three hundreds in his first
Notts season, then only three more in 55 innings before the 229 not out reset the
story in 2023 — but the last three seasons suggest that phase is behind him.
Career outside APL
Clarke's rise began at Worcestershire, where he made his first-class debut against
Hampshire at Southampton on 31 May 2015, aged 19, and scored his maiden first-class
and List A hundreds within four weeks of each other at the end of that season. His
first full season, 2016, brought five Championship hundreds and more than 1,000 runs,
including 194 against Derbyshire at New Road — his career-best at the time, made off
328 balls with 25 fours and a six, and ended in the final over before lunch as he
chased a double hundred. He was picked for England Lions that winter, the first
teenager selected since Joe Root, and toured the UAE against Pakistan A.
The white-ball breakthrough came in July 2017, when his unbeaten 124 off 53 balls
chased down 202 against Durham at New Road. In March 2018 he was Player of the Series
in the North-South Series in Barbados, scoring 229 runs at 76.33, and in September
that year he won his first T20 Blast title as Worcestershire beat Lancashire and
Sussex on finals day. He left New Road after relegation to Division Two, joining
Nottinghamshire on a four-year deal with 13 first-class hundreds to his name at an
average of nearly 40.
The hardest episode of his career came in 2019, off the field. Messages he had
exchanged in a WhatsApp group with former Worcestershire team-mates surfaced during
the trial of Alex Hepburn, who was convicted in April 2019 of raping a woman in 2017.
Clarke was a witness at the trial, not a defendant: he was not suspected of any
offence, and the judge said he had done nothing wrong on the night in question. But
the messages themselves — part of a sexual-conquest game — were judged to have
demeaned women and trivialised rape, and the ECB charged Clarke and Tom Kohler-Cadmore
with bringing the game into disrepute. Both admitted the charge. In July 2019 the
Cricket Discipline Commission reprimanded them, fined each £2,000, and imposed a
four-match suspension deemed already served, because both had been withdrawn from an
England Lions tour in January. Clarke later spoke of his embarrassment and shame. He
has never played senior international cricket.
At Nottinghamshire he settled quickly: 112 and 97 not out against Yorkshire in his
first Championship match, 621 runs at 31.05 in his debut season, and the club's
highest scorer in the 2019 One Day Cup with 340 runs at 42.5. He won a second T20
Blast title in 2020 — with a second county — and was Notts' T20 Player of the Year in
2020 and again in 2023. The 136 against Northamptonshire in 2021 remains the highest
T20 score by an Outlaw, and the 229 not out against Warwickshire in June 2023 ended a
21-month wait for a red-ball hundred in the most emphatic way possible.
Appointed Notts' T20 captain for 2024, succeeding Steven Mullaney, he finished as the
Blast's top run-scorer in his first summer in charge and second the next. In 2025 he
helped Nottinghamshire win the County Championship — their seventh title, and their
first in 15 years — making 52 in the title-clinching win over Warwickshire at Trent
Bridge. A new two-year deal, signed in October 2025, runs to the end of 2027, by
which time he had scored almost 8,000 runs in all formats for the club. In April 2026
he was the Championship's leading run-scorer for the month, with 449 runs at 74.83.
Away from England he has played in every major franchise league except the IPL. In the
Big Bash he has turned out for Perth Scorchers, Melbourne Stars and Melbourne
Renegades, with 800 runs at 30.76 across two seasons with the Stars and a hundred
against Hobart Hurricanes at the MCG. In the PSL he played for Karachi Kings in 2021
and 2022, opening with Babar Azam and making 46 off 23 balls on debut. He has also
played The Hundred for Manchester Originals, Welsh Fire and Birmingham Phoenix, and
the ILT20 for Abu Dhabi Knight Riders. As of 26 September 2026 his career figures
stood at 10,213 first-class runs at 40.85 with 29 hundreds, 1,846 List A runs at
34.18, and 6,647 T20 runs at 26.27 with four hundreds.
FAQs
Which team does Joe Clarke play for in APL 2026?
Joe Clarke plays for Kandahar Warriors in APL T20 2026. He was picked in the
Diamond category at the player draft in Dubai on 3 November 2026, for US$65,000.
Kandahar are captained by Rashid Khan, coached by Ravi Bopara and mentored by
Irfan Pathan, and the season starts on 27 December 2026 in the UAE.
Did Joe Clarke play in the first APL season in 2018?
No. Clarke was 22 and playing for Worcestershire in 2018, nine days after winning
the T20 Blast title with them, and his name appears in none of the five squads
from that season. The English players in 2018 included Ravi Bopara, Luke Wright
and Sam Billings, but not Clarke. APL 2026 is his debut in the competition.
What is Joe Clarke's highest first-class score?
His highest first-class score is 229 not out, made for Nottinghamshire against
Warwickshire at Trent Bridge in June 2023. He batted for eight hours and 38
minutes, faced 365 balls and hit 35 fours and a six to save the match after Notts
had followed on 416 runs behind. It was his maiden double hundred and his
career-best.
Has Joe Clarke played international cricket for England?
No. Despite playing for England Under-19s at the 2014 World Cup and for England
Lions from 2015, Clarke has never been capped at senior level. He was withdrawn
from a Lions tour of India in January 2019 and made unavailable for England
selection that year after an ECB disciplinary case. He remains one of county
cricket's most prominent uncapped players.
Which franchise leagues has Joe Clarke played in?
Clarke has played in the Big Bash League for Perth Scorchers, Melbourne Stars and
Melbourne Renegades, in the Pakistan Super League for Karachi Kings, in The
Hundred for Manchester Originals, Welsh Fire and Birmingham Phoenix, and in the
ILT20 for Abu Dhabi Knight Riders. He has not played in the IPL.
