Welcome to Sixes: cricket pushes the boundaries of competitive socializing | Cricket

LLast month Headingley received a new cricket venue. It doesn't have much in common with the long-standing and much better known town down the road, which tends to be drier, warmer and considerably more attractive to young people. In October a similar venue arrived in Bristol, just a few miles and a world away from the County Ground. These are the most recently opened branches of Sixes, a kind of bar/restaurant/cricket mix. If WG Grace would have difficulty recognizing the game people play there, it is already more familiar to many than the version that requires good weather, outdoor space, cushions, patience and a bit of sobriety.

Four years after the first one opened its doors, there are 18 in the UK, another 20 to 30 planned in this country, satellites in the Caribbean and the US, something in the region of 1,500 franchise applications (mainly from the US) that hinder their entry. -tray, current and former England internationals Ben Stokes, Stuart Broad, Jofra Archer and Andrew Strauss have all invested and its CEO, Calum Mackinnon, claims: there are now more people playing Sixes in Britain than are actually practicing the sport cricket. Resistance is futile.

It would be romantic to imagine that Sixes came from someone's love of the game and a desire to spread the word. Instead, it was created by two Scots who had barely looked at a bat, let alone picked one up, and fueled the rapid spread of so-called competitive socialization.

A rich history: the bowling and cocktail bar All Star Lanes was launched in London in 2006, and the table tennis venue Bounce six years later. Entrepreneur Adam Breeden had their backs, and he kept going. “I thought, if you can do it with ping pong, you can do it with other sports,” he said. The darts bar Flight Club followed in 2018, followed by mini golf Puttshack in 2018 and F1 Arcade in 2022.

None of this had gone unnoticed and it was in late 2019 that Mackinnon and Andy Waugh, owners of Scottish restaurant Mac & Wild, decided to join the fray with a virtual hunting and whiskey bar concept called Smoky Barrels. There was something of a backlash, with Peta stating that, with limitless possibilities for entertainment, it's almost psychopathic to get a kick out of shooting other living things, even in a virtual world. Then Covid struck; neither Mac & Wild nor Smoky Barrels survived, and as Mackinnon describes it: We were literally like, Shit, what do we do now? And Andy had a great idea.

Waugh takes over the story. We did a lot of research into what hadn't been done yet. Because we had seen Flight Club playing darts and Puttshack putting, he says. So the obvious next sport to bring into a bar was fishing.

Fishing appeared to be dead in the water for the time being, and cricket was next on the list. We looked for this training technology and contacted them, and Andy and I had a hit, says Mackinnon. We had never played cricket before, and we went into this cage and thought, wow, this is actually really fun. Imagine if you could do this with five pints, a great atmosphere and great food.

On a cold early afternoon last week I had my first attempt. On a screen in front of you you see a bowler approaching, from which an orange, plastic and often harmless ball emerges at the right moment. There are spinners and seams. The ball actually spins. There are three game modes, including a Hundred version, created in collaboration with the England and Wales Cricket Board, and six difficulty levels. Runs are scored by hitting the ball into panels placed around a mesh cage. Waugh, who I feel has had quite a bit of practice, was happily hitting the ball around in the professional setting. It's all about attacking, attacking cricket, he says. I waved awkwardly at amateur. The experience was both a lot of fun and a little daunting, although a few friends, a few drinks and a decent pizza would probably have eased the pain a bit.

It certainly seems like a popular recipe, and Six's customer base, 54% in their 20s, 35% female, is exactly the kind of people that cricket would like to get involved with. The question is: will someone make the switch? I think Andy and I are almost the perfect example of that, says Mackinnon. Were two Scots who never played or watched cricket in their lives and eventually founded Sixes and now we enjoy going to cricket matches. We attend a lot of games now and love it. We went to Lords when we had Mac & Wild and I don't think we actually watched a single minute of cricket, we just sat in the bar the whole time. We just didn't really appreciate it, didn't know what was going on. I'd say we're pretty big fans now.

There has already been one recruit, but it will be a while before we find out how important this one could be. After honing his skills at Sixes, Mackinnon's nine-year-old son, Casper, has been asked to feature for Surrey. He came to our headquarters meeting a few weeks ago and he played the entire headquarters and absolutely destroyed all of us, says Mackinnon. He is so lucky to have spent thousands of hours in these nets.