ashes

The Ashes

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For other uses, see The Ashes (disambiguation).

The Ashes
The Ashes urn is reputed to contain a burnt cricket bail.
Countries	Australia and  England
Administrator	International Cricket Council
Format	Test cricket
First tournament	1882/83
Tournament format	Test Series
Number of teams	2
Current trophy holder	England
Most successful	Australia (31 titles)
Most runs	Donald Bradman (5,028)
Most wickets	Shane Warne (195)
2010–11 Ashes series
v · d · e

The Ashes is a Test cricket series played between England and Australia. It is one of the most celebrated rivalries in international cricket and dates back to 1882. It is currently played biennially, alternately in the United Kingdom and Australia. Cricket being a summer sport, and the venues being in opposite hemispheres, the break between series alternates between 18 and 30 months. A series of "The Ashes" comprises five Test matches, two innings per match, under the regular rules for Test match cricket. If a series is drawn then the country already holding the Ashes retains them.
The series is named after a satirical obituary published in a British newspaper, The Sporting Times, in 1882 after a match at The Oval in which Australia beat England on an English ground for the first time. The obituary stated that English cricket had died, and the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia.^[1] The English media dubbed the next English tour to Australia (1882–83) as the quest to regain The Ashes.
During that tour a small terracotta urn was presented to England captain Ivo Bligh by a group of Melbourne women. The contents of the urn are reputed to be the ashes of an item of cricket equipment, a bail.
The urn is erroneously believed by some to be the trophy of the Ashes series, but it has never been formally adopted as such and Bligh always considered it to be a personal gift.^[2] Replicas of the urn are often held aloft by victorious teams as a symbol of their victory in an Ashes series, but the actual urn has never been presented or displayed as a trophy in this way. Whichever side holds the Ashes, the urn normally remains in the Marylebone Cricket Club Museum at Lord's since being presented to the MCC by Bligh's widow upon his death.^[3]
Since the 1998–99 Ashes series, a Waterford Crystal representation of the Ashes urn has been presented to the winners of an Ashes series as the official trophy of that series.
England is the current holder after winning the Ashes in 2009 and again in the 2010/11 series in Australia.

Contents [hide] 1 Legend 2 Urn 3 Series and matches 3.1 Quest to "recover those ashes" 3.2 1884 to 1896 3.3 1897 to 1902 3.4 Reviving the legend 3.5 1905 to 1912 3.6 1920 to 1933 3.7 1934 to 1953 3.8 1954 to 1971 3.9 1972 to 1987 3.10 1989 to 2003 3.11 2005 to present 4 Summary of results and statistics 5 Match venues 6 Cultural references 7 See also 8 Notes 9 References 10 External links

[edit] Legend

The first Test match between England and Australia was played in 1877, though the Ashes legend started later, after the ninth Test, played in 1882.
On their tour that year (1882) the Australians played just one Test, at The Oval in London. It was a low-scoring affair on a difficult wicket.^[4] Australia made a mere 63 runs in its first innings, and England, led by A. N. Hornby, took a 38-run lead with a total of 101. In their second innings, the Australians, boosted by a spectacular run-a-minute 55 from Hugh Massie, managed 122, which left England only 85 runs to win.
The Australians were greatly demoralised by the manner of their second-innings collapse, but fast bowler Fred Spofforth, spurred on by some gamesmanship by his opponents, refused to give in. "This thing can be done," he declared. Spofforth went on to devastate the English batting, taking his final four wickets for only two runs to leave England just eight runs short of victory in one of the closest and most nail-biting finishes in the history of cricket.
When Ted Peate, England's last batsman, came to the crease, his side needed just ten runs to win, but Peate managed only two before he was bowled by Harry Boyle. An astonished Oval crowd fell silent, struggling to believe that England could possibly have lost to a colony. When it finally sank in, the crowd swarmed onto the field, cheering loudly and chairing Boyle and Spofforth to the pavilion.
When Peate returned to the pavilion he was reprimanded by his captain for not allowing his partner, Charles Studd (one of the best batsman in England, having already hit two centuries that season against the colonists) to get the runs. Peate humorously replied, "I had no confidence in Mr Studd, sir, so thought I had better do my best."^[5]
The momentous defeat was widely recorded in the British press, which praised the Australians for their plentiful "pluck" and berated the Englishmen for their lack thereof. A celebrated poem appeared in Punch on Saturday, 9 September. The first verse, quoted most frequently, reads:

Well done, Cornstalks! Whipt us

Fair and square,

Was it luck that tript us?

Was it scare?

Kangaroo Land's 'Demon'^[6], or our own

Want of 'devil', coolness, nerve, backbone?

On 31 August, in the great Charles Alcock-edited magazine Cricket: A Weekly Record of The Game, there appeared a mock obituary:

SACRED TO THE MEMORY

OF

ENGLAND'S SUPREMACY IN THE

CRICKET-FIELD

WHICH EXPIRED

ON THE 29TH DAY OF AUGUST, AT THE OVAL

"ITS END WAS PEATE"

On 2 September a more celebrated mock obituary, written by Reginald Brooks under the pseudonym "Bloobs", appeared in The Sporting Times. It read:

In Affectionate Remembrance

of

ENGLISH CRICKET,

which died at the Oval

on

29th AUGUST 1882,

Deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing

friends and acquaintances

R.I.P.

N.B.—The body will be cremated and the

ashes taken to Australia.

The death notice that appeared in The Sporting Times

Bligh promised that on the tour to Australia in 1882–83, which he was to captain, he would regain "the ashes". He spoke of them several times over the course of the tour, and the Australian media quickly caught on. The three-match series resulted in a two-one win to England, notwithstanding a fourth match, won by the Australians, whose status remains a matter of ardent dispute.
In the 20 years following Bligh's campaign the term "The Ashes" largely disappeared from public use. There is no indication that this was the accepted name for the series, at least not in England. The term became popular again in Australia first, when George Giffen, in his memoirs (With Bat and Ball, 1899), used the term as if it were well known.^[7]
The true and global revitalisation of interest in the concept dates from 1903, when Pelham Warner took a team to Australia with the promise that he would regain "the ashes". As had been the case on Bligh's tour 20 years before, the Australian media latched fervently onto the term, and, this time it stuck. Having fulfilled his promise, Warner published a book entitled How We Recovered The Ashes. Although the origins of the term are not referred to in the text, the title served (along with the general hype created in Australia) to revive public interest in the legend. The first mention of "The Ashes" in Wisden Cricketers' Almanack occurs in 1905, while Wisden's first account of the legend is in the 1922 edition.