
Set TC-B is a pair of batsmen, one in striking pose and the other a non-striker leaning on his bat.
An interesting part of the design is that they don’t have batting gloves on. Brave chaps!
Originally packaged in small box bearing a stumps and ball illustration, the 70s repackaging saw them move into clear bags with a stapled card. In either case there were no labels identifying the team. Not so much of a problem after the switch to bags, prior to that shops often wrote on the boxes themselves to identify the contents.
The Standard Blue and Red sets are least often seen nowadays. Probably a result of both sets not being recognised teams, so not in high demand. I suspect I wasn’t the only young player who painted his red capped batsmen light blue to complete one full team, and I wonder how many blue capped batsmen appearing on eBay are genuine. I was lucky enough to be able to buy two unopened bagged sets to add originals to my collection.
One variant you can find occasionally is a batsman mounted on a thicker, unlettered base (bottom left). These bases were used for police and cameramen in the football sets, and were probably used in an emergency when they were short of standard stock with an order to complete. I’ve only have an example on a West Indies batsman, but a fellow collector has similar for a pair of Aussie batters (see both below).
You can also find variants which are Subbuteo figures produced for games made by other manufacturers. Bottom right is an interesting example. The blue batsmen shown were supplied by Subbuteo for Wicketz, a playing card based cricket game sold by Paul Lamond Ltd in the 1990s. The numbered outer circle of the base has numbers and twists to identify the batters in the batting order.








