1894-5 and All That

GH with a candidate for the best Ashes

What was the greatest Ashes series of all? 1981? 2005? 1948? All have a magic ring but my candidate, if it couldn’t be 1902, would be 1894-95. It certainly established a standard for five-Test drama, going two-all to the concluding match. Here’s another extract from my new edition of On The Ashes, which as I said is now available in Australia and England, recounting the big dipper fortunes of that series long ago. Frithy’s wonderful book, which had just come out when I wrote this thirty years ago, is also highly recommended. GH

‘I say, “Old Man”, who’s got those Ashes?’

The inquiry, in a contemporary cartoon by George Ashton, was polite but pointed. The off-field welcome was hospitable, the on-field intent explicitly hostile. England’s cricketers came to Australia holding an Ashes trophy some eleven years old, but it was in the 1894-5 series that their rivalry first showed its staying power.

In his book on the series, Stoddy’s Mission (1994), David Frith has called it ‘the first Great Test Series’. The rubber’s unfolding was perfect: England won the first two Tests, Australia the next two, and England the decider. These games featured passages so dramatic and captivating that even Queen Victoria asked to be kept abreast of scores. The patriotic pride involved in the result, moreover, reached a new intensity.

The British Empire was at a peak, and the country to which Drewy Stoddart led his 13 Englishmen was one recovering from the trauma of a banking crash while also experiencing the early rapture of proto-nationalism, 1894-style. Ashton’s employer The Bulletin incorporated both “fair dinkum” and “Cobber” as parts of the local vernacular. Ethel Turner published her Seven Little Australians and Tom Roberts painted his ‘Golden Fleece’. Cricket had anticipated federalism when the colonies agreed amongst themselves to invest a gratuity left by Lord Sheffield, a patron of the previous English touring team, in a new championship shield. Its first season, 1892-3, also saw Western Australia and Queensland join New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania as first class cricket competitors. Now Stoddart’s team was the first invited by colonies in cooperation rather than competition.