| What is the reality behind the mythology
of The Ashes? The amazing and unexpected answers
are revealed in this deeply researched book
which will fascinate every cricket lover round
the world. Here, for the Birth time, the Oval
Test match of 1882 – every bit as dramatic
as anything in the 2005 season – is recreated
ball by ball all the way to the agonising climax
when Australia won by 7 runs.
Here, too, is the social context of that match,
from the founding of Australia, spiced with
a host of insights into how cricket was born
and how it grew in a vast, rugged land - and
how the Australians first came to England to
take on the Mother Country.
The story of The Ashes is more, much more. When
the Hon. Ivo Bligh took an England team to Australia
in 1882–83 he said he was going to reclaim
the Ashes of English cricket, lost at the Oval.
That led to a meeting with a property baron
near Melbourne, an invitation for the team to
stay at his mansion for Christmas … a
knock-about match against the staff …
and the baron’s wife, who had a little
urn on her mantelpiece. She felt she ought to
put some ashes into it for Bligh.
It led Bligh to a love affair with an Irish
music teacher at the mansion, marriage and residence
in his family mansion in Kent. It was this Irishwoman
who, in 1927 when Bligh died, carried out his
final instructions and sent the urn to be displayed
at Lord’s, where it remains today as the
living symbol of 130 years of titanic struggle
between the old enemies.
|
|
