History · 2026-06-26

The story of the Ashes: cricket's oldest rivalry

No trophy in cricket carries a stranger story than the Ashes. There is no gleaming cup, no grand shield — only a tiny terracotta urn, small enough to hold in one hand, born from a joke in a newspaper. Yet the contest it represents, between England and Australia, is the oldest and most storied rivalry in the game. To understand the Ashes is to understand a great deal about cricket itself.

An old rivalry, a young name

England and Australia had been playing each other at cricket for years before the Ashes had a name. The first Test match, played between the two countries in 1877, predates the legend entirely. For a while these were simply matches between the mother country and its former colony — hard-fought, keenly followed, but without the particular mythology that would later attach to them.

That mythology arrived suddenly, and by accident, in 1882. What turned an ordinary international fixture into cricket's defining rivalry was not a great innings or a famous catch, but a few lines of comic writing in a London newspaper.

The match that started it all

In 1882 Australia played a Test match against England on English soil, and won. This was a shock. England, playing at home, was expected to prevail, and defeat on home turf by the young colonial side was received almost as a national humiliation. It was the manner of it, too — a tense, low-scoring match settled in a dramatic finish — that seared the result into memory.

Australian cricket had come of age, and the result announced it. For the first time an England side had been beaten at home by Australia, and the English cricketing public did not quite know how to take it. Into that mood of mock-mourning stepped a satirical writer with an idea that would outlive everyone involved.

The obituary that named the Ashes

In the days after the defeat, a London newspaper published a tongue-in-cheek obituary. It announced, with heavy irony, the death of English cricket, and declared that the body would be cremated and "the ashes taken to Australia." It was a joke — a witty way of expressing national despair at losing to the colony — but the phrase caught the public imagination and never let go.

From that moment, matches between the two countries were played for "the Ashes." The idea was irresistible: a symbolic contest for the cremated remains of English cricket, to be won or lost each time the sides met. What had been a satirical flourish became the name of the rivalry itself, and it has stuck for well over a century.

The tiny urn

The physical Ashes urn came shortly afterwards, and it is famously modest. On a subsequent England tour of Australia, a small terracotta urn was presented to the England captain, said to contain the ashes of a burnt cricketing item — a bail, by most accounts. It was a private gift, a light-hearted echo of the newspaper joke, not an official trophy at all.

That is the delicious oddity of the Ashes: the object at the heart of one of sport's great rivalries is a fragile little urn only a few inches tall. For much of its life it has been kept safely at a museum in England rather than handed over to the winners, precisely because it is too delicate and too precious to travel and change hands like an ordinary cup. Teams compete for the honour of "holding the Ashes" as an idea, even when the urn itself stays put. A larger replica trophy is presented for the winners to lift, but everyone knows the real symbol is that small, unassuming vessel.

Series, not a single match

Over time the Ashes settled into a particular shape: not a one-off match but a series of Tests, played out over a summer, in which the countries take turns to host. Winning the Ashes means winning the series — and, crucially, the holder keeps the Ashes if the series is drawn. That single rule adds a layer of drama all its own, because the side that already holds them can retain them without actually winning, while the challenger must win outright to take them back.

This series format is central to the Ashes' character. A single Test can be lost and the wider prize still saved; a team can be behind and fight back over weeks; momentum can swing from one venue to the next. The best Ashes contests are slow-burning campaigns, full of shifting fortunes, sub-plots and personal duels that build across a whole summer rather than exploding in a single afternoon.

Why the rivalry endures

Plenty of international sporting rivalries burn brightly and fade. The Ashes has endured for well over a century, and several things explain its staying power.

• History and continuity. The contest has been played, on and off, for generations. Families have followed it for a lifetime, and each new series is layered on top of every one that came before. Players are measured against the greats of the past.
• The even contest. Neither country has been able to dominate the other for long. The balance of power has swung back and forth across the decades, and a rivalry only stays compelling when both sides keep believing they can win.
• The shared language and distance. England and Australia are bound by a common cricketing heritage yet separated by half the globe. The touring side travels to utterly different conditions, and the contrast — swinging English pitches against bouncier, faster Australian surfaces — tests every player's adaptability.
• The stakes are pride, not money. There is no vast prize fund driving the Ashes. What is at stake is bragging rights between two proud cricketing nations, and that turns out to be a far more durable motivation than any trophy value.

The Ashes and the wider game

The Ashes has always been more than a private quarrel between two countries. Because both nations have been central to cricket's development, their rivalry has often set the standard for the whole game. Tactics, techniques and even controversies that first flared in an Ashes series went on to shape how Test cricket was played everywhere.

The contest has also served as a benchmark for greatness. For players from both countries, performing in the Ashes — scoring runs on a hostile tour, taking wickets when the series is on the line — carries a weight that few other assignments match. Careers have been defined, and reputations sealed or broken, by how a cricketer fared in these matches. To do well against the oldest enemy is, for an English or Australian player, close to the summit of the game.

A living tradition

What makes the Ashes special is that it remains genuinely alive. It is not a heritage exhibition wheeled out for nostalgia's sake but a live, fiercely contested series that each new generation of players wants to win as badly as their predecessors did. The little urn still symbolises the whole thing, the series format still produces its slow-building drama, and the crowds still fill the grounds.

From a joke in a newspaper to the most cherished prize in Test cricket, the Ashes is proof that sport's greatest traditions are not always designed. Sometimes they grow, almost by accident, from a moment of wit and a shared sense of history — and then refuse, decade after decade, to fade away.

If cricket's long rivalries and the players who lit them up appeal to you, crickedle turns that heritage into a daily guessing game. Try the Guess the Cricketer mode to test how many of the game's greats you can name, or explore the crickedle blog for more cricket history. A quick daily puzzle is a fine way to keep the sport's stories close — play today's here.