Sacred Soot

GH on the timeless appeal of the Ashes

From time to time, people try to ween themselves off the Ashes. The home ground advantage is too pronounced. The rivalry between India and Pakistan is more potent. The five-Test series is an anachronism. All of which are arguable. The Ashes simply nods, smiles, thanks you for your time, and waits - it knows you’ll be back.

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Because there’s no escaping it, really. Cricket’s calendar is tighter than a face on The Golden Bachelor. But somehow there is always room for more Ashes. Sometimes we test the rivalry’s limits. Remember the flogging of an incinerated horse that was the ten consecutive Ashes Tests of 2013-14? On Boxing Day 2013, the ninth game in the sequence, an unremarkable encounter in a dead rubber with whimpering visitors at the mercy of surging hosts, a world record crowd of 91,092 attended. As the joke runs, you had to be there.

This summer - especially if you’re English en route to Australia - optimism reigns. England has not won on Australia soil for a dozen prime ministers - six Australian, six English - but omens somehow are in the air. Mind you, few predictions are so perishable as those about the Ashes. They have been known to last a single delivery. A wicket, a wide or a boundary from the first ball can shiver the most confident and authoritative forecasts to fragments.