The urnEngland lost the first Test but won the series 2-1 - including the first ever innings victory in Test cricket. Afterwards, a group of Melbourne ladies presented Ivo Bligh with a small, terracotta urn containing ashes. Most versions of the story say the ashes were from a bail that they had burnt, but others claim it was a stump or even a ball.
POEMSEngland's defeat against the aussies was widely recorded in the British press, which praised the Australians and berated the Englishmen. A celebrated poem appeared in Punch on Saturday, 9 September. The first verse, quoted most frequently, reads: Well done, Cornstalks! Whipt us Fair and square, Was it luck that tript us? Was it scare? Kangaroo Land's 'Demon', or our own Want of 'devil', coolness, nerve, backbone? On 31 August, in the magazine Cricket: A Weekly Record of The Game, there appeared a mock obituary: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ENGLAND'S SUPREMACY IN THE CRICKET-FIELD WHICH EXPIRED ON THE 29TH DAY OF AUGUST, AT THE OVAL "ITS END WAS PEATE" On 2 September a more celebrated mock obituary appeared in 'The Sporting Times'. It read: 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. This poem is written of the actually urn itself. It follows: When Ivo goes back with the urn, the urn, Studds, Steel, Read and Tyclecote return, return The welkin will ring loud, The great crowd will feel proud Seeing Barlow abd Bates with the urn, the urn, And the rest coming home with the urn. |