Last month Headingley got a new cricket venue. It doesn’t have a lot in common with the long-established and much more famous one down the road – this one tends to be drier, warmer and significantly more attractive to young people. In October a similar venue arrived in Bristol, both just a couple of miles and a world away from the County Ground. They are the most recently opened branches of Sixes, something of a bar/restaurant/cricket medley. If WG Grace would struggle to recognise the game people are playing there, for many it is already more familiar than the version that requires good weather, outdoor space, pads, patience and a modicum of sobriety.
Four years after the first one opened its doors there are 18 across the UK, another 20-30 planned in this country, satellites in the Caribbean and the USA, something in the region of 1,500 franchise requests (mainly from the US) clogging their in-tray, the current and former England internationals Ben Stokes, Stuart Broad, Jofra Archer and Andrew Strauss have all invested and the CEO, Calum Mackinnon, claims: “More people now play in Sixes in the UK than actually play the sport of cricket.” Resistance is futile.
