How I became The Cricket Plug?!

This is a question I frequently get asked, and I always give a really simple answer…. ‘Bored in Lockdown’. Although that is true, there is definitely more to it than just a simple ‘I took a  risk in covid’ answer. 

For the years post college and full time work, I bought and sold trainers which became a very nice hobby. It was only when Covid came around that selling trainers somehow morphed, or merged, into buying and selling random cricket items on eBay. This then ultimately became selling cricket bats under the name ‘Xpro Bats’, which was an experience…. And then in 2022 it became The Cricket Plug. 

To go back to basics, I’m Tom, I’m 26 and I absolutely love cricket. Growing up I was cricket mad, and still am in a different way.  Whether it was getting photographs with various players, running around the boundary rope to collect autographs of all players on both sides, having made sheets with boxes for each player's signature. From memory the first ‘player’ item I got was an England Training T-Shirt from 2014 courtesy of a bin bag of tops left at my local club to give to juniors players. I still have the t-shirt to this day! 

In late 2020 I decided to try my hand at selling cricket equipment to people local to me as well as online. Then the plan changed and moved into selling pro grade and player used/issued bats. This was a short lived venture which gave me my first look into the world of self employment and the challenges it comes with. Here is an old Instagram story from 2021 I found!

Bats didn’t last long having realised they come with their own set of challenges particularly when they break. So on January 2nd 2022, Xpro Bats became ‘The Cricket Plug’ and that's where the journey really starts to take place. Following this, in April 2022 I quit my job and threw myself head first into being self employed full time. As someone who never particularly excelled in school and left college after a year to be running my own business a matter of years later, it made my lack of school qualifications worthwhile. 

From 2022 - 2024 I hammered growing the business reinvesting what I could to grow and expand it to the point where on the 3rd of Jan 2024 I moved into our first and current external premises. And in short that’s a very brief story of The Cricket Plugs journey to now. This is a photo of the office the day I left to go watch England in Australia!

Looking towards the future, I would like to think it's bright and filled with growth and new opportunities and ideas. I know I've banged the drum about a pop up shop but this is something I’m actively looking into running post cricket season and giving myself plenty of time to promote it properly so hopefully it'll be a roaring success. 

As well as running a pop up shop, I will try to play the occasional Content Creator XI match to meet cricket creators, hopefully showcase my limited cricket ability and show people that The Cricket Plug is more than just an online store. It has also been discussed about branching into a new sport, but I won’t be divulging into what just yet. 

So my advice would be stick around, see what new stock we have coming. But more importantly be part of the process where we move from being purely an online store to being an online presence as well.