What are the Ashes? - one for John and Graham

The first Test match between England and Australia had been played in 1877, but the Ashes legend dates back to their ninth Test match, played in 1882. On the 1882 tour, the Australians played only one Test, at The Oval in London. The game was a low-scoring affair on a difficult pitch. Australia made only 63 runs in their first innings, and England took a 38-run lead with a total of 101. In the second innings, Australia posted 122, leaving England to score only 85 runs to win. Australian bowler Fred Spofforth refused to give in, declaring, "This thing can be done". He devastated the English batting, taking the final four wickets (four batsman dismissed) while conceding only two runs, to leave England a mere seven runs short of victory in one of the closest and most nail-biting finishes in cricket history.
The defeat was widely recorded in the English press. The most notable report was a mock obituary, written by Reginald Shirley Brooks, printed in the The Sporting Times on the following Saturday.

"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 English media played up the subsequent tour to Australia in 1882/83 (which had been arranged before this defeat) as a quest to "regain the Ashes".

The trophy

After the third game of the 1883/4 tour, when the English team were guests of Sir William Clarke over Christmas, a group of Victorian ladies headed by Lady Clarke burned what has variously been called a ball, bail or veil, and presented them to Bligh in an urn together with a velvet bag, which was made by Mrs Ann Fletcher, the daughter of Joseph Hines Clarke and Marion Wright, both of Dublin. She said, "What better way than to actually present the English captain with the very 'object' – albeit mythical – he had come to Australia to retrieve?" Bligh later married another of these Melburnian ladies, Florence Morphy. When he died in 1927 he bequeathed the urn to the Marylebone Cricket Club. The urn itself is made of terracotta and is about four inches (10 cm) tall.

A poem was presented to Bligh with the urn and appears on it:

When Ivo goes back with the urn, the urn;
Studds, Steel, Read and Tylecote return, return;
The welkin will ring loud,
The great crowd will feel proud,
Seeing Barlow and Bates with the urn, the urn;
And the rest coming home with the urn.

Despite the teams playing for the Ashes, the Ashes urn itself is never physically awarded to Australia, but is kept permanently in the MCC Cricket Museum at Lord's Cricket Ground. It has been back to Australia only once, in 1988 for a museum tour as part of Australia's Bicentennial celebrations. In the 1990s, given Australia's long dominance of the series the idea was mooted of the victorious team being awarded the trophy. Instead the MCC commissioned a Waterford crystal replica, which is now awarded to the winning team.

In 2002, Bligh's great-great-grandson (the heir-apparent Earl of Darnley) argued that the Ashes should not be returned to Australia as they were essentially the property of his family and only given to the MCC for safe-keeping.