The Ashes

The Ashes is a Test cricket series contested only between England and Australia, ordinarily five matches, alternating between the two countries roughly every two years; the side holding the urn keeps it if a series is drawn. The name and the whole tradition began as a joke: after Australia beat England on English soil for the first time, at The Oval in 1882, the London newspaper The Sporting Times printed a mock obituary for English cricket stating that the body would be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. When England's captain Ivo Bligh led a side to Australia that winter promising to recover those ashes, and won two of the three matches played, a group of Melbourne women presented him with a small terracotta urn, believed to contain the ashes of a burnt cricket bail, which gave the series its enduring physical symbol and its name. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/