Australia have been doing their best to rattle England in the final hours before the first Test at the Gabba. Nathan Lyon has promised to “end the careers” of the current players while simultaneously launching a tirade against former wicket-keeper Matt Prior.
The sledging has begun, the vitriol is only likely to increase as the series plays out – but to truly understand the venom behind the Ashes, you have to go back to August 29th, 1882.
In an altogether less competitive time, England still looked on Australian cricket with derision. When they welcomed a team made up of players from the Australian colonies to the Oval, they did so having never lost to them on home soil. Naturally, it took just over two hours to bowl them out for 63, their top-scorer managing just 17.
England’s first innings was far from convincing, thanks largely to the pace of Fred Spofforth, who took a career best of 7-46. Spofforth’s major scalp came early on, as he dismissed WG Grace for four.
Australia’s second innings was more respectable, but still resulted in a collapse. It seemed only a matter of time before England whittled down their lead of 84.
Spofforth took to the ball with a vengeance. Another seven wickets, this time for 44. Grace tried to resist with a knock of 32, but a capitulation worthy of England’s current middle order ensued.
Contemporary news reports suggested one spectator had died as a result of the tension. That is made a little less believable by other reports that one supporter had bitten through the handle of their umbrella, but we are still left with a picture of a day that stunned England to the core.
The Sporting Times led the post-mortem. The obituary: English cricket was dead, “the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia”. The author of that piece of satire could not possibly have predicted the name would stick.
That Test is not officially remembered as the birth of the Ashes, as it predated the introduction of the urn. However, it had sparked something between the two countries, which England would begrudgingly go on to accept as a legitimate rivalry.
In the aftermath, they reclaimed their dignity by retaining the Ashes for the next seven series, the longest they have ever held onto them for.
Australia would have to wait until 1892 for their first victory and until 1892 to win a series on English soil. That was an early dark patch for England, as they would lose back-to-back Ashes in front of home crowds.
In fact, spells of Australian dominance have been alarmingly common. The urn eluded England for over a decade in the 1930s and 40s, and again between 1958-68. The latter included one of their most spectacular batting collapses of all time, as Richie Benaud took them from 150/1 to 201 all out at Old Trafford in 1961.
The worst was still to come. Between 1989 and 2003, the Baggy Green won it a record eight successive times, a run which only ended with the iconic 2005 series.
Few histories of the Ashes make particularly pleasant reading for less masochistic England fans ahead of the first Test at the Gabba, and nor do the stats of Australia’s more recent form on home soil. They’ve won six of the last seven Ashes Down Under, while only South Africa have beaten them at home in a Test match in the last five years. Fortunately, Joe Root’s job in the biggest test of his captaincy so far, is not to look to history, but to inspire a new generation of players to write their own chapter.
