Six weeks after the Sporting Times mock obituary, the Hon Ivo Bligh sailed for Australia at the head of a private English team with the explicit, half-joking goal of bringing 'the Ashes' home. England lost the first Test at Melbourne, won the next two at Melbourne and Sydney to take the official series 2-1, and at the end of the tour Bligh was presented with a small terracotta urn that, decades later, became the most famous trophy in cricket.
After the August 1882 Oval defeat, the Sporting Times obituary became a press refrain. Bligh, then 23 and a Cambridge graduate of moderate playing ability, was approached to lead a private team to Australia in the southern summer.
Bligh's side sailed in October. On the way out their ship collided with another in the Bay of Biscay; Bligh injured his hand seriously enough that he could not bowl for the early matches. The team arrived in Melbourne on 11 November.
Bligh's XI was a privately-raised side, not a representative MCC tour. He took thirteen players including Charles Studd, the brothers Allan and Walter Read, Billy Bates and the Hon Alfred Lyttelton. They sailed on the Peshawar in late 1882, weathered a collision in the Bay of Biscay (Bligh injured his hand), and arrived in Melbourne in mid-November.
The tour began with a defeat in the first Test at Melbourne (30 December 1882 — Australia won by nine wickets), recovered with a win at Melbourne (19 January, the match in which Billy Bates took 14 wickets and a hat-trick), and was completed with a Sydney win on a sticky pitch (Bates again, plus Barlow's slow left-arm). The official three-Test series ended 2-1 to England.
A fourth match was added at the end of the tour, with combined teams and effectively in a different format; Australia won. Whether this counted as a Test (and whether the series was 'really' 2-2) has been disputed by historians for over a century.
It was during the trip — and most likely at Christmas 1882 at Sir William Clarke's Rupertswood estate at Sunbury, north-west of Melbourne — that the small terracotta urn was first presented to Bligh as a private joke. Lady Janet Clarke and her music teacher Florence Morphy were the prime movers. The urn, said to contain the burnt ashes of a bail (a veil, in some accounts), was rewrapped in a red velvet bag and presented again at Easter 1883 with a small verse pasted to its side.
Bligh stayed in Australia for several months after the tour. He fell in love with Florence Morphy and they married in February 1884. He brought the urn home as a personal gift; it would not be presented to MCC until after his death in 1927.
30 Dec 1882: Australia win the 1st Test at Melbourne by 9 wickets.
19 Jan 1883: England win the 2nd Test at Melbourne by an innings; Bates 14/102 and hat-trick.
26 Jan 1883: England win the 3rd Test at Sydney by 69 runs.
Christmas 1882: First presentation of the urn at Rupertswood.
Easter 1883: Second, more documented presentation at Rupertswood.
17 Feb 1883: Australia win 4th match (status disputed).
Feb 1884: Bligh marries Florence Morphy in Melbourne.
1927: Bligh (now Lord Darnley) dies; widow Florence presents the urn to MCC.
Oct 1882
Bligh's XI sails from England.
11 Nov 1882
Team arrives in Melbourne.
Christmas 1882
Urn first presented at Rupertswood.
30 Dec 1882
1st Test: Australia win by 9 wickets.
19 Jan 1883
2nd Test: England win by innings; Bates hat-trick.
26 Jan 1883
3rd Test: England win by 69 runs; series 2-1.
Easter 1883
Urn re-presented to Bligh with verse.
Feb 1884
Bligh marries Florence Morphy.
“We have come to recover those Ashes.”
“When you return to England you will take with you the Ashes.”
Bligh succeeded as the 8th Earl of Darnley in 1900. He and Florence had three children. The urn sat on his mantelpiece at Cobham Hall in Kent until his death in 1927; Florence then presented it to MCC, where it has remained. Replicas now travel between England and Australia each Ashes series.
Bates, the hero of the second Test, suffered a career-ending eye injury in the nets during the 1887-88 tour and tried (unsuccessfully) to take his own life. Spofforth's Australians retained the unofficial 'Ashes' through 1884.
The tour that turned a satirical newspaper joke into a permanent piece of cricket iconography — and produced the urn that, eventually, became the most photographed trophy in the sport.
The 1882-83 tour created the Ashes urn and the Ashes mythology in their physical and personal forms. Without Bligh's romance with Florence Morphy, without Lady Clarke's joke at Rupertswood, the Sporting Times obituary might have been remembered as a single Saturday paragraph rather than the founding document of an international rivalry. Cobham Hall in Kent and Rupertswood in Victoria are now Ashes pilgrimage sites.
Yorkshire v Essex
1932-06-16
On 15-16 June 1932 Herbert Sutcliffe (313) and Percy Holmes (224*) put on 555 for the first wicket against Essex at Leyton, breaking the world first-class record for any wicket and adding a layer of folklore — including a scoreboard that read 554 for several minutes and a hastily reversed declaration — that has clung to the partnership ever since.
Australia v England
1933-02-14
With the fate of the Bodyline series in the balance and England 216 for 6 chasing 340, Eddie Paynter checked himself out of a Brisbane hospital where he was being treated for acute tonsillitis, taxied to the Gabba in pyjamas and a dressing gown, and batted for nearly four hours to score 83. England drew level on first innings, won the Test by six wickets and the series 4-1.
Australia
1934-09-25
Days after the 1934 Oval Test, Bradman fell seriously ill with appendicitis that progressed to peritonitis. With antibiotics not yet available, he was given little chance of survival; his wife Jessie left Adelaide on a sea voyage to England prepared for the worst. He recovered after weeks of intensive nursing in a London nursing home and returned to first-class cricket the following Australian summer.