Sportspages’ New Stock catalogue is packed with signed items: There are a LOT of signed items among the varied range of sports and their memorabilia in this New Stock catalogue. The autographs of the full, victorious 1911-12 England Ashes team are captured on a large album page, for example. Not to be outdone as ever, […] More…
We are back after a long, fantastic summer of sport and just in time to settle down for the Rugby World Cup in Japan. After the dramas of the Cricket World Cup, anything seems possible… We’ve just put out our new catalogue – a sample of the stock that has been added to the website […] More…
It’s just not cricket…or is it? Cricket as a sport has always been seen as one steeped in good manners. In recent years, however, we have all lived through incidents of ball tampering and match fixing in recent cricket matches. Is this a recent phenomenon? Or despite cricket’s gentlemanly reputation, has cunning behaviour been a […] More…
We’re very excited about this year’s Six Nations Championship. It’s likely to be a non-stop series of knuckle-biting, tense encounters between the key contenders. Ireland is generally seen as the Championship’s favourite but England, Wales and Scotland could all pull out performances to stop Ireland in their tracks. The Ireland v Wales fixture in Cardiff […] More…
Sportspages’ New Stock catalogue is packed with signed items:
There are a LOT of signed items among the varied range of sports and their memorabilia in this New Stock catalogue. The autographs of the full, victorious 1911-12 England Ashes team are captured on a large album page, for example. Not to be outdone as ever, there is also a postcard signed by the 1934 Australia Ashes team. There are signed items from boxing, horseracing, football, rugby and even bobsleighing in St Moritz.
If you’re not looking for autographs, there are also fantastic scorecards, photographs, programmes and more. We have the official football programme for the iconic Austria v England ‘Lion of Vienna’ 1952 International to the arguably slightly quirkier 1946 Roller Speedway Programme. And, don’t get us started on the 1936 Springboard Championship photograph: take a look.
We are back after a long, fantastic summer of sport and just in time to settle down for the Rugby World Cup in Japan. After the dramas of the Cricket World Cup, anything seems possible…
We’ve just put out our new catalogue – a sample of the stock that has been added to the website in the last couple of months – and there’s plenty more to come so watching!
It’s just not cricket…or is it? Cricket as a sport has always been seen as one steeped in good manners. In recent years, however, we have all lived through incidents of ball tampering and match fixing in recent cricket matches. Is this a recent phenomenon? Or despite cricket’s gentlemanly reputation, has cunning behaviour been a part of the sport since its beginning?
One of the sport’s earliest organised matches was between Chertsey and the world’s first cricket club, Hambledon. Hambledon had an extremely strong team, including leading bowler, Thomas Brett, and captain, Richard Nyren. They hadn’t bargained on a genius batsman from Chertsey however. Thomas ‘Shock’ White came out to bat…with a bat as wide as the stumps! At that point, a bat as wide as you like was perfectly legal. It hadn’t yet occurred to anyone to play with an outrageously wide bat or to restrict their dimension. Funnily enough, Hambledon quickly put in a formal written protest and by 1774 the Laws of Cricket had been changed. The legal width of a bat was restricted to today’s maximum size of 10.8 cm.
One of the greatest cricketing names in history had a slightly questionable reputation for ‘gentlemanly behaviour’: W G Grace. Grace was known to be a notorious sledger – generally frowned on if not actually illegal in cricket. The great batsman was also said to have at times ignored being bowled out. He simply replaced the bails after a bowler had disturbed his wicket and carried on batting regardless. He was claimed to have told the ‘offending’ bowler, “They’ve come to watch me bat, not you bowl”, which may have been fair comment too. Obviously we all want well behaved, legal cricket teams to support and matches to watch but nothing beats a cricket match nailbiter to watch, especially with a bit of controversy thrown in too!
We’re very excited about this year’s Six Nations Championship. It’s likely to be a non-stop series of knuckle-biting, tense encounters between the key contenders. Ireland is generally seen as the Championship’s favourite but England, Wales and Scotland could all pull out performances to stop Ireland in their tracks. The Ireland v Wales fixture in Cardiff on the final weekend may well be particularly exciting: will Ireland win that critical match and repeat their 2018 Six Nations success? Wales has a fantastic home advantage: the game will be played in Cardiff and Ireland has only beaten Wales once in Cardiff since 2009. England, on the other hand, although in very good form, get to play Ireland in Dublin and Wales…in Cardiff, slightly losing the home advantage in two key matches! Can they dig that bit deeper and triumph over those challenges? We can’t wait to see what happens.
