The Ashes Test Cricket Series - Interesting Facts

England and Australia have been fighting it out for world supremacy since 1877 and these ancient adversaries will continue to do so on a biannual basis as long as cricket is played.

• The Ashes series alternates between being held in England or Australia on a biannual basis. However, as cricket is a summer sport and the nations are in different hemispheres the actual series break can be anywhere from 18 to 30 months. If the five match series is drawn then the country already holding The Ashes retains them.

• The name of the series actually came from a satirical account published in The Sporting Times in 1882 after a match when Australia beat England for the first time on English soil at The Oval. English cricket was said to have 'died' and the 'ashes' taken back to Australia.

• During the subsequent 1882 – 3 tour by England, a small terracotta urn was presented to England by a group of women in Melbourne. The contents were said to contain 'the ashes' and the legend was born.

• The little Ashes urn is not the trophy for the victors of an Ashes series, It was given to Ivo Bligh the England Captain and he always retained it as a personal gift. The actual urn has never since been presented to anyone. It remains in the Marylebone Cricket Club Museum at Lords to where it was left by Bligh's widow on his death.

• Replicas of the urn are often held aloft by the winning team at the end of an Ashes series and since the 1998-99 Ashes series a Waterford Crystal representation of the urn is now presented to the victors.

There has been much speculation over the years as to what was actually burnt to make the original ashes for the urn but this small 'trophy' has come to represent one of the biggest rivalries, not only in cricket but all of sport.