Triumphant Ponting wants Ashes trophy to stay in Australia by Cricketarchive Staff Reporter

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Player:

RT Ponting

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DateLine: 20th December 2006

 

Triumphant Ricky Ponting wants the coveted Ashes urn, cricket's holy grail, to remain in Australia after his team wrested it back from England in record time on Monday. The tiny ceramic trophy, which has symbolized cricketing rivalry between the two nations since 1882 is normally housed at London's

 

Marylebone Cricket Club but is touring Australia for only the second time in nearly 124 years. Australian captain Ponting, whose team has now held the urn for all but 15 months of the last 19 years, says it is time for the fragile urn to take residence Down Under.

 

"It would look quite good in Cricket Australia's office," Ponting joked after his side's 206-run win in the third test of the five-Test series in Perth. "Surely it's got to be too frail to fly back. They've always said it's been too frail for it to fly out here. It's been here for a month now so it's got to be even worse," he said. The 10-centimetre (four-inch) urn visited Australia for the country's bicentenary celebrations in 1988 and had been due to return to Australia in 2002-03, but the trip was cancelled cracks were found in its stem. Repair work to the urn was successful with the result it was strong enough to fly between England and Australia - under tight guard in a first class airline seat. The urn, possibly an old perfume bottle, was given to England captain Ivo Bligh by a Lady Clark during England's 1882-83 tour of Australia in a nod to a mock obituary of English cricket published after an Australian victory in 1882. The term "Ashes" was coined after England lost a Test to Australia for the first time on home soil at The Oval on August 29, 1882. A day later, the Sporting Times carried a cheeky obituary of English cricket which concluded: "The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia." The now precious urn presented to Bligh during England's subsequent tour Down Under was filled with what is reputed to be the ashes of a burned set of bails, but its contents are still the subject of debate.