Latest News & Items

Perfect Putting at the Ryder Cup?

28th September 2023

More…

Sportspages on Holidayish

1st August 2023

Do feel free to order during the next two weeks. We are on a bit of a holiday ‘go-slow’ but orders will be fufilled and sent out…just a little more slowly! More…

England in the 2023 Women’s Football World Cup

20th July 2023

It’s that time again, when we can hope and dare to dream: that England CAN win the 2023 World Cup in New Zealand and Australia. They have a good chance. It’s a great time for women’s football…and it’s a good time to look back at its history. As we all know, women’s football grew massively […] More…

Calling time on Just Fontaine – a French football legend, RIP

16th March 2023

We love discovering sports memorabilia with great stories. Recently we acquired one of Just Fontaine’s commemorative watches, which fills exactly that brief. The wristwatch is inscribed to dial “Just Fontaine. World Record 13 goals 1958-1998”. Fontaine, French football legend, presented one of these watches to each of the twenty two members of the French 1958 […] More…

Sporting Legends we have lost

19th January 2023

When we sent out our first New Stock Catalogue of the year, we realised it had been a while – too long! – since our last one in September. We reflected on the sporting legends we had lost just since September – way too many. We thought we’d like to make at least brief mention […] More…

Argentina wins the 2022 World Cup for the third time

22nd December 2022

More…

Uruguay World Cup Football 1930

10th November 2022

More…

King Charles III and Cricket

15th September 2022

We have been contemplating the huge job in front of King Charles III. We reminded ourselves what an able man he has shown himself to be over the years. Us being us, we looked to sport for the clues. We all know what a great polo player and general equestrian he was. We’ve seen him […] More…

England’s Lionesses in the Women’s Euros 2022: How far women’s football has come!

21st July 2022

How proud would these pioneers of women’s football from 1918 be to see England’s Lionesses perform in the Women’s Euros 2022?! When this Scottish women’s team played in 2018, they would have rightly believed they had already come far. Despite attempts to set up and build up women’s football in the nineteenth century, it was […] More…

Was he in or was he out? Ted Dexter in 1968

4th November 2021

More…

Archives

Search

Cricket Scorecards: Sportspages’ New catalogue

14th April 2016

Rare & unusual Cricket Scorecards – our new cricket catalogue is out. We’ve  struggled to keep the item numbers down in the catalogue. There are simply too many cricket scorecards with great stories to tell on our website! Some of the scorecards stand out due to their age. An I Zingari v the Liverpool Club cricket match took place on 19th July 1859.  An extremely rare scorecard from the first ever Australian Tour of England in 1878 tells a painful  early story of England Cricket.

MCC v Australians 1878 Cricket Silk Scorecard, cricket scorecards
MCC v Australians 1878 Cricket Silk Scorecard

The game was at Lord’s. Somehow the Australians scored only 41 yet won the match by 9 wickets. England, led by WG Grace, were bowled out twice in an afternoon, scoring just 33 and 19. The scorecard belonged to Alick Bannerman, the famous “stone-waller”, and has his name printed to the reverse.

VICTORIA V NEW SOUTH WALES 1926 (RECORD SCORE OF 1107)
VICTORIA V NEW SOUTH WALES 1926 (RECORD SCORE OF 1107)

Another cricket scorecard stands out due to the match’s extraordinary score. On 24-29th December 1926 Victoria amassed a still unbeaten First-Class record score against New South Wales at Melbourne. Victoria made 1107 runs over the five days. Ponsford was top scorer, having made 352 runs. Arthur Mailey was hit for a soul-destroying 362 runs in his 64 8-ball overs. New South Wales lost – unsurprisingly – by an innings and 656 runs. It remains only the third heaviest defeat in history…so far.

 

Other cricket scorecards in the catalogue tell stories that bring in outside elements to cricket itself. Footballing legend Geoff Hurst’s only First Test Match score was in a cricket match in 1962 . Another of the cricket scorecards in our catalogue introduces a significant element of interest outside cricket. In July 1902 London County played the MCC at Crystal Palace. London County won by an innings with Wood, Poidevin and WG Grace all scoring centuries for County. But the real intrigue is the appearance of one Sir A Conan Doyle for the MCC team, who scored his highest first-class score in the match. He made 43 runs.

LONDON COUNTY CC V MCC & GROUND 1902 (SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE'S HIGHEST FIRST-CLASS SCORE), cricket scorecards
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s appearance for the MCC in 1899

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was a hard hitting, though not especially skilled, batsman and a bowler of slow, loopy lobs which often took a puzzling flight. Indeed he once quipped that so slow was his bowling that if he ever delivered one he didn’t fancy could run down the wicket, intercept it, and come back for another go!  In 1899, for the MCC, he took seven for 61 against Cambridgeshire at Lord’s and on the same ground two years later carried out his bat for 32 against Leicestershire. It is said that Shacklock, the Nottinghamshire player, inspired him with the Christian name of his famous character, Sherlock Holmes, and that of the latter’s brother Mycroft was suggested by the Derbyshire cricketer of that name.

If a picture tells a 1000 stories, it turns out cricket scorecards tell 1000s more! There are many more stories told by the cricket scorecards in our catalogue and on our website. Take a look.