Australia regains Ashes Test Series

December 18, 2013

Australia reclaimed the Ashes test series just four months after the last series defeat in England with a 3^rd Test victory on home soil.

The Ashes:

The Ashes is a conceptional prize in a Test cricket series played between Australia and England. The Ashes are regarded as being held by the team that won the last Test series between those sides or, if that series was drawn, by the team that last won such a series. Traditionally, Ashes series consists of 5 Tests played biennially with England and Australia taking turns as host.

Why is it called the Ashes?

The association of the term ‘the Ashes’ with England v/s Australia test series has a story behind. In 1882, Australia defeated England for the first time in Test on England’s soil. Following this, a British newspaper, The Sporting Times, published a satirical obituary stating that the English cricket had died, and the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. The mythical ashes instantly became associated with the 1882–83 series played in Australia, before which the English skipper Ivo Bligh had vowed to “regain those ashes”. The English media therefore called the tour the quest to regain the Ashes.
After England had won two of the three Tests of the series, a group of Melbourne women presented a small urn to Bligh. Among those women was Florence Morphy, whom Bligh married within a year. The contents of the urn are reputed to be the ashes of a wooden bail, and were amusingly described as “the ashes of Australian cricket”. There is ambiguity whether that “tiny silver urn” is the same as the small terracotta urn given to the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) by Bligh’s widow after his demise in 1927.
The urn has never been the official trophy of the Ashes series, having been a personal gift to Bligh. However, replicas of the urn are often held aloft by winning teams as a symbol of their victory in an Ashes series.