Researching William Sykes

The business prospered and a few years later added footballs to the other leather goods it was making. The Sykes Zig-zag branded football was used in many leading events including the FA Cup finals of 1936, 1937, 1939 and 1946.

Sykes subsequently expanded his business by dealing in cricket bats, before moving into their manufacture. Donald Bradman, widely acknowledged as the greatest Test batsman of all time, used bats produced by Sykes throughout his career. in 1929, shortly after Bradman scored the then highest First-Class innings of 340 while playing for New South Wales at the Sydney Cricket Ground, Sykes signed him up to help promote what became known as the Don Bradman bat, or the Autograph bat.

William Sykes was joined in the business by his sons Henry Osbourne Sykes 1875-1939 married Maud Berry in 1899 and William Oates Sykes 1884-1935 married Ethel May Marshall in 1907. Early in the 20th century, Wm. Sykes & Sons merged with other sporting manufacturers, eventually becoming part of the Slazengers Sykes Gradidge and Ayres organisation.

Sykes was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. As a cricketer, he was a lower-order batsman and apparently a bowler, though only limited statistics are available for the matches he played in, and his bowling and batting styles are unknown. He is credited with taking three wickets in the first of his two first-class matches for Cambridge University, which was the 1844 University Match against Oxford University; he also bowled nine wides, though other details of his bowling are missing. He then played single first-class games in each of the four seasons from 1846 to 1849 for four different sides, though all of the matches were held in Cambridge.

Sykes graduated from Cambridge University in 1847 with a Bachelor of Arts degree; this was automatically converted to a Master of Arts in 1850. His subsequent career is in parts unclear. He was vicar of Dorrington, Lincolnshire from 1862 to 1886, but the directory of Cambridge University alumni states that he then "fell upon evil times, being employed selling bootlaces in London streets c 1902". He died at one of the Rowton Houses for destitute people at Vauxhall in London in 1915, aged 91.