Ashes (cricket)

In cricket, The Ashes is a mythical prize awarded to the winning team in a Test series between England and Australia. The idea originated in a spoof obituary notice published by The Sporting Times, a British newspaper, on 2 September 1882. The subject of the memorial was English cricket because England had just been sensationally defeated by Australia in one of the most famous matches in history:

In Affectionate Remembrance

of
ENGLISH CRICKET,
which died at the Oval
on
29 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.

"Recovering those ashes"

The following winter, an England team captained by Ivo Bligh sailed to Australia with the stated intention of "recovering those ashes". They played a series of three Tests against Australia and won two against one. Sometime during the tour, Bligh was presented with a small urn which is believed to contain the ashes of a burnt bail. He brought it home with him and it is now in the museum at Lord's.

Although Bligh's team had avenged the 1882 defeat, it was some twenty years before The Ashes became a widely recognised concept. In the 1903–04 Australian season, Pelham Warner revived it. His team won a five-match series 3–2 and Warner afterwards wrote a book called How We Recovered the Ashes (1904). Since then, winning The Ashes has been the objective of Australia and England in Test series against each other.

Women's Ashes

Australia Women and England Women contest the Women's Ashes, which is an actual trophy specially created in 1998. Until then, the Ashes concept had been exclusive to men's cricket. The Women's Ashes Trophy is a hollow cricket ball containing the ashes of two burnt bats and a copy of the Women's Cricket Association (WCA) charter. This was done during a ceremony at Lord's on 20 July 1998 before a match between the two teams. The WCA merged with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) so that men's and women's cricket in England and Wales were united under a single governance. Worldwide, women's cricket is now united with the men's game under International Cricket Council (ICC) governance.