Why is the England v Australia cricket series called the Ashes?

The Ashes is one of sport’s oldest and fiercest rivalries, fought over a trophy so tiny you could hide it in a coat pocket. The name sounds solemn, even funereal. In fact it began as a newspaper joke, mocking England after a humiliating defeat on home soil.

The short answer

On 29 August 1882, Australia beat England at The Oval in London, its first Test win in England. The Sporting Times responded with a mock death notice for English cricket, which had supposedly died at The Oval. The body, it said, would be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia.

The real story

The fake obituary hit a nerve, and the joke took on a life of its own. That winter, England’s captain, the Hon. Ivo Bligh, led a team to Australia, and the tour was talked about as a mission to bring back ‘the Ashes’.

During that tour, Bligh was given a small urn containing ashes. Exactly how and when is where things get murky. The traditional story says a group of Melbourne women presented it after England won two of the originally arranged three Tests, and that the ashes came from a burnt bail. Other evidence, which came to light in 1982, points to the urn being given earlier, around Christmas 1882, by the family of Sir William Clarke at their Rupertswood estate near Sunbury in Victoria, and possibly containing a burnt ball. Even Bligh and his wife gave differing accounts.

That wife is part of the story too. Florence Morphy had been a music teacher to the Clarke children at Rupertswood. She and Bligh married, and the urn went home with them to England, where it sat at the family estate for decades. After Bligh’s death in 1927, she gave it to the Marylebone Cricket Club, and it is displayed at the MCC Museum at Lord’s.

Because the original is so small and fragile, the teams do not actually win it. A larger Waterford Crystal replica is handed to the winners instead.

Why people get it wrong

Ashes in an urn means a funeral to most people, so it is natural to assume a real person is inside, perhaps a legendary player. The true contents are uncertain, but the main candidates are cricket equipment, not people. A bail and a ball are the usual suspects, and one theory even suggests a veil. The only thing that definitely died was English pride, and only for a while.

“The whole thing started as a joke in the paper about England being dead. As an Australian, I’m obliged to say it was a very good joke. As a shoe, I’m just glad nobody cremated a boot.”