The Ashes is a Test cricket series played between England and Australia. The Ashes are regarded as being held by the team that most recently won the Test series.

The term originated in a satirical obituary published in a British newspaper, The Sporting Times, immediately after Australia's 1882 victory at The Oval, their first Test win on English soil. The obituary stated that English cricket had died, and "the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia". The mythical ashes immediately became associated with the 1882–83 series played in Australia, before which the English captain Ivo Bligh had vowed to "regain those ashes". The English media therefore dubbed the tour the quest to regain the Ashes.

After England had won two of the three Tests on the tour, a small urn was presented to Bligh by a group of Melbourne women including 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 humorously described as "the ashes of Australian cricket". It is not clear whether that "tiny silver urn" is the same as the small terracotta urn given to the MCC by Bligh's widow after his death in 1927.

The Ashes series, like the cricket series of the same name, was a best-of-three series of test matches between the British and Australian national rugby league football teams. It was contested 39 times from 1908 until 2003 largely with hosting rights alternating between the two countries. From 1973 Australia won thirteen consecutive Ashes series.

History

Several sports and events adopted cricket's Ashes "concept" and by the beginning of the 20th century it was an "accepted principle" that a series had to have at least three matches to be a true test of which side was the best.

On 27 September 1908, the first touring Australian rugby league side arrived in England, and played their first ever Test against the England side in December in London. Two further Tests were played. The Australians suggested that the series should be called "The Ashes" and the name stuck.

The format used is that three matches are played, with the winning team being decided on the basis of most matches won. If one team has already won two matches the series is already won, however the final game is usually still played. In the 1929–30 Ashes series both the teams won one game and one game was drawn; it was therefore decided to hold a further match to determine the outcome.

The Australian cricket team toured England in the 1977 season to play five Test matches for the 1977 Ashes series against England. The Australians also played three one day internationals and 19 other tour matches.

The Australian side had been quite strong in the early 1970s and had won the previous two Ashes series, 1974–75 at home and 1975 in England. Although it was not a contest for The Ashes, Australia and England had also played in the Centenary Test from 15 to 19 March 1977 to mark the 100th anniversary of the first Test match. Remarkably Australia won by exactly the same margin of 45 runs. However the tourists, led by new captain Greg Chappell, were rocked prior to the start of the 1977 Ashes series by the conflict between the Australian Cricket Board and Kerry Packer's Nine Network that emerged following the Centenary Test regarding the rights to television broadcasts of cricket in Australia. Packer wanted to transfer the rights to televised cricket from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) who had held the rights since 1956, to his own Nine Network and was prepared to pay a much larger amount than ABC. Despite this, the Australian Cricket Board refused, and Packer set about creating a rebel World Series Cricket league, successfully recruiting many star international players in the process.