THE ASHES CRICKET

Cricket is a traditional game originated in England but later it travelled to various countries. But what if some other country comes and defeats England on their own land. That’s what happened in England on the Oval Cricket Ground on 29 August 1882. England lost the series from Australia on their own land. And then the very next day came a news headline from The Sporting Times [an English Newspaper], “The body is cremated and the ashes are taken to Australia.” And so the name Ashes came out in the cricket world.

A few weeks later England was going to tour Australia for the Ashes series. The English captain Ivon Bligh gave a statement that he will win the Ashes and bring the title back to England. As the England team toured Australia the head of the Australian Ladies group named Florence gifted the English captain with an urn and there were ashes of the burnt cricket bails inside it. Later the England side won the Ashes and Australia failed to retain the Ashes series.

But there was also a beginning of a love story in cricket from that time as Ivon Bligh and Florence loved each other and they married in 1884 that means the Ashes gave rise to a remarkable love story not only in cricket but even in the topics of sport.

THE ASHES URN

As I mentioned earlier about how the idea of the urn came as Florence gifted an urn to Ivon Bligh. The urn was in Bligh’s residence till his death. Florence gave it to the MCC [Marylebone Cricket Club/ The Lord’s Cricket club] in 1929. It is now kept in the Lord’s Cricket Museum, but now you may be wondering how is it seen on the ground after every Ashes series?

Actually the urn that you see on the ground and the players celebrating with is not original. It is the exact copy of the original urn. This is because the original urn is very delicate and no risk can be taken for the urn to be broken.

THE SPIRIT

So this was the story of the history of the Ashes but what now? Well, there are a number of matches that are greats in the Ashes. Whether you take the famous 2005 Edgbaston test’s magical over to Pointing by Andrew Flintoff or the 2019 Ashes, Ben Stokes innings, these all are greats. But there are a number of magnificent performances by great players.

But thing we are talking about is that Ashes is the oldest competition in the field of cricket. Literally speaking, it is even more important than World Cup for the Aussies and English. But the spirit of cricket has never ended. There are still great matches going on in the Ashes. The reason behind that is because test cricket is still alive in those countries. Once the test cricket has died the cricket will lose its shine because it is the original format of cricket. So the Ashes is alive because the test cricket is alive.

England and Australia have given a great respect to test cricket and that’s the reason they are still the greats of cricket. Otherwise Sri Lanka, West Indies, South Africa, Pakistan these countries were great teams earlier. They are still good but not like earlier. That’s because they don’t play good test cricket.

So the spirit needs to be carried on and we hope that the test cricket should never die and we hope the Ashes will keep giving us some wonderful encounters between the big and oldest rivalry in cricket.