THE ASHES AND MORE

INTRODUCTION

Australia, the great south land! When you mention the country of Australia, anywhere in the world, a few distinct images will probably come to mind.

It’s a land of sun, surf and sand. Unique and amazing animals, the kangaroo, the koala and the platypus to name a few. Fabulous natural wonders, Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef and the iconic structures of the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

But there’s one other picture that’s just as powerful. Sport! Now Australia’s obsession with sport is legendary. But it’s not just a legend.

Our tiny nation of around 25 million earns a disproportionate number of medals and trophies every year in sporting events around the world.

So why is Australia a sporting nation? Why is being able to kick a football, catch a cricket ball or swim a lap faster than anyone else, arguably as important as a good education?

And what is it about cricket in particular that can capture the eyes of a nation? What are the Ashes and why are they so important? Well, join me as we follow the fascinating story of the Ashes and discover its amazing message for us today.

When the first British colony was settled in Australia in the late 18th century, life was tough. The greatest concern for most members of Sydney’s convict colony was avoiding starvation. It bred a tough nation determined to survive.

The first newspaper in Australia, the Sydney Gazette, began printing in 1803. Old copies show that it reported on local government concerns and the convicts, and it also reported on sport, the local cricket matches and the conditions of play.

CRICKET

It’s no surprise that Cricket is one of the first sports to get a mention in Australian history. The first recorded cricket match in Australia was played in Sydney in December 1803.

In fact, Australia’s first cricket matches actually took place in Sydney’s Domain – then known as Phillip’s Common, after the first Governor, Arthur Phillip.

So how did the game of cricket that originated in south-east England in the 16th century, spread around the world? Well, by the 18th century, Cricket was the British national sport, and wherever the British planted their flag and expanded their empire they took the game with them. Today, over 105 countries play cricket, and the game is played or watched by over 2 billion people.

Now, the game of cricket is played by two teams of 11, with one side taking a turn to bat and score runs, while the other team will bowl and field, to restrict the opposition from scoring. The players usually dress in white, and a test match is played over 5 days.

THE ASHES

Australia’s obsession with the bat and ball didn’t reach maturity until 1882 with the birth of an   international contest that would rival all others: ‘The Ashes’.

Now the Ashes provided early Australians with a national goal worth striving for, in a land where sport had become the nation’s passion. Sportsmen were representing Australia for a long time, even before Australia actually even existed as a nation.

In fact, the first Cricket team to tour England was an all-Aboriginal team in 1867. They stunned the provincial English, not only with their boomerang and spear displays, but with their batting average. Out of 47 matches, they won 14, lost 14 and drew 19.

The standard of Australian cricket continued to rise. The young colony came of age in 1882 when a touring Australian eleven played a representative English side at the Surrey County Cricket Club Oval in Kennington, one of Britain’s most hallowed grounds.

The English were so assured of their sporting superiority that on previous tours they’d let the Aussies put more players on the field than the home team. But, the ninth test team of eleven Australians, captained by Billy Murdoch weren’t looking for favours.

20,000 people turned out to see Britannia rule the pitch. Australia suffered a second-innings batting collapse, which meant England only needed only a small total to win. But Aussie bowlers Fred Spofforth and Harry Boyle kept their focus and bowled well.

The tension was so intense there are reports that one spectator gnawed off part of his umbrella and another man actually had a heart attack. The last ball rocketed down the pitch – and it was over. England fell just 7 runs short of victory. The visitors from ‘Down Under’ had beaten the ‘Poms’, a colloquial Australian name for the English.

The entire Oval fell silent. A full-strength English team had been beaten for the first

time on English soil. A few days later England’s Sporting Times published the following obituary:

“In Affectionate Remembrance of English Cricket, which died at the Oval on 29th AUGUST 1882. Deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances. The body will be cremated, and the ashes taken to Australia.”

And so, the legend of the Ashes was born. The Aussie victory not only sent a shockwave through England, the result rocked the other side of the globe as well.

Australians were now officially ‘cricket mad’ – every family played cricket in the backyard or in the street. Cricket clubs were springing up all over the country. And players like Monty Noble and Victor Trumper were becoming household names.

It explains to some degree the intense rivalry between the two nations and how the Ashes have become one of the most desired trophies in cricketing international sport. But what it doesn’t explain is where ‘The Ashes’ come into the story.

Well, of course English cricket fans weren’t happy to let the ‘death of cricket’ go unavenged. So it wasn’t long before the team was on a ship bound for Sydney with their captain, the Honourable Ivo Bligh.

The English media dubbed their tour, ‘the quest to regain The Ashes.’ Now it just so happened that Sir William Clarke, one of Australia’s richest men at the time and president of the Melbourne Cricket Club, was heading home on the same ship as the English cricket team.

Well, this English cricket team went on to achieve their goal. They played three test matches – lost one, but won the next two, restoring the honour of English cricket. But the final twist in the tale took place after the final Melbourne match.

After their victory, the English team ended up at Sir William Clarke’s luxurious private home,    ‘Rupertswood’. Despite being in semi-rural Australia, the Clarke home reflected the taste and décor of an English Lord at the time.

But Sir William couldn’t resist the national sporting bug – and suggested the English play a friendly game with his staff.

After the match, a group of local ladies presented Ivo Bligh with a little terracotta perfume bottle – a make-believe urn – with supposedly the ashes of a cricket ball inside.

At dinner Lady Clarke announced the two countries now had a trophy to play for. Of course, there has been more than a century of intrigue since, because no-one actually knows what the urn contains!

Some say the ashes are of a cricket bail, not a ball. But one thing’s clear – ‘The Ashes’, one of the world’s oldest and most important trophies, is actually the punch line of a lady’s joke!

There’s something else that’s peculiar about the Ashes. No matter who wins the test match every two years, the urn remains at Lords, England’s ‘home of cricket’. So it’s the trophy no-one ever takes home.

And despite nearly 140 years of test matches, the tally between Australia and England is so close to a draw as not to matter. No trophy, no clear victory – but ‘The Ashes fever’ continues to have a hold on the Australian heart.

AUSTRALIANS AND SPORT

Now, why is it that Australians are so in love with sport? There are names from Australia’s sporting history that are better known than the nation’s founding fathers.

Don Bradman. Shane Warne. Phar Lap. Rod Laver. Margaret Court. Greg Norman, Wally Lewis. Tim Cahill. Gary Ablett. Cathy Freeman. Ian Thorpe. And, of course, Dawn Fraser.

Australian Olympian Dawn Fraser is one of only three swimmers to win gold in the same event three times. She’s become something of a national treasure, having been named Australian of the Year, and in 1998 voted Australia’s greatest female athlete.

And now there is Emma McKeon, who was the most decorated athlete at the Tokyo Olympics, winning 7 medals, the most by any female swimmer at a single games, and the equal-most by any woman in Olympic history.

The national climate certainly assists Australia’s sporting aspirations. More than 80% of Australia has an annual rainfall of less than 600 millimetres. Only Antarctica receives less rainfall.

And combine that with an average temperature that ranges between 12 and 27 degrees Celsius, and you end up with a lot of days to practice outdoor sports.

Some have also suggested that Aussies have learnt to be a little more tough due to their environment. Much of Australia is a harsh and unforgiving land that experiences droughts to flooding rains.

THE WORKING MAN’S PARADISE

But none of that stopped Australia from earning the nickname of the ‘Working man’s Paradise’. During the second half of the 19th century the people who immigrated to Australia were seeking their fortune on the goldfields, the opal fields and in free enterprise.

To many, Australia was a fabled country where working conditions were dramatically better than the rest of the British empire. Melbourne’s Immigration Museum records the dramatic influx of people looking to call Australia home.

Even when the gold began to peter out the economic boom kept going. The massive

influx of people made lots of other industries possible. More people meant more homes, offices, factories and generated a huge building boom.

Another grand project was to build a railway network across this vast land. The first railway line in Australia opened between Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station and Port Melbourne, then called Sandridge, on 12 September 1854.

The pastoral industry also boomed at this time and many found work on the farms, caring for the animals, building fences and shearing sheep.

But what’s all this got to do with sport? Well some distinct characteristics began to emerge with your average Australian worker.

Economic freedom and free enterprise meant there was an opportunity for self- improvement. Personal liberty gave the chance to choose, to be treated equally. And the sporting ground was the place to prove it. And the 19th century exploded with sport.

Australians became sport mad!

In 1857, Tom Wills, returned to Australia after attending college in England where he had excelled at sport. He had been the football captain of the Rugby School and a brilliant cricketer.

Wills, along with his cousin and friends developed a new code of football as a winter game to keep the cricketers fit during the off-season. And so, the Melbourne Football Club was formed on 7 August 1858. Australian Rules football or AFL was born. 

The first recorded match was between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar School, and the footy fever soon spread from Victoria to South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia.

New South Wales was still in favour of the British ‘Union’ rules but by the turn of the century it had also adopted a more free-flowing form of rugby favoured by the working classes, and Australian Rugby League was born. Both codes went on to host games where spectators numbered many thousands.

THE RACE THAT STOPS A NATION

But better known all over the world is an event associated with the ‘sport of kings’ – Australia’s annual horse race, the Melbourne Cup. It’s become a famous sporting legend. The first race was held in 1861.

This 3200 metre, or 2 mile horse race stops the nation – supposedly because so many people watch it. Even Mark Twain was amazed by the attention the Melbourne Cup attracted when he visited Australia in 1895.

“The Melbourne Cup is the Australian National Day. It would be difficult to overstate its importance. It overshadows all other holidays and specialized days of whatever sort … Overshadows them? It blots them out!”

“I can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, whose approach fires the whole land with a conflagration of conversation and preparation and anticipation and jubilation.”

– Mark Twain, 1897

NEW IDEAS

But Australian sport came under threat by a tradition of a totally different sort. You see, the Australian colonies had been established through back-breaking convict labour. It was common for them to have a long working day. And those habits were hard to leave behind.

In the early 1800’s working hours were fixed at nine hours a day, Monday to Friday. But the convicts were still expected to labour an extra five hours on Saturday. Of course, convict labour ended, and Australia’s gold rush began.

The flood of new settlers and new-found wealth caused all sorts of social chaos that no-one expected. But one of the real changes was the arrival of people from all over the world determined to do things differently. New ideas began to take hold. And 8-8-8 was one of them.

Yes, Eight – Eight – Eight! Eight hours of work, eight hours of rest, eight hours of recreation. In 1853 a Welsh-born stonemason called James Stephens immigrated to Australia and began work on the new quadrangle at the prestigious University of Melbourne.

Stephens was a chartist – someone who believed in political reforms for workers – and in 1855 he met with other stonemasons to form a union to fight for the eight-hour working day. The University’s stonemasons soon connected with other workers.

Their chorus – eight hours work, eight hours rest, eight hours recreation – became a nation-wide protest. The stonemasons and other workers were hoping to build something that would outlast mere stone and mortar.

On 21 April 1856 they downed tools and marched on Victoria’s parliament. After two weeks, Parliament voted and for the first time Aussie workers gained the right to the eight hour working day.

Workers ranked the achievement so highly that in typical Australian fashion they insisted the occasion be marked with a public holiday, Labour Day. Now more time for sport!

THE AUSTRALIAN DREAM

Fair pay for work … a rest time … and plenty of time for leisure. They’re all part of the Australian dream. But how good have we been at holding on to them?

In 2016 the ‘eight-hour day’ celebrated its 160th anniversary, but its birthday went unnoticed by most Australian workers – because things have changed. By the 1970s most Australians worked a 38-hour week, and commentators started talking about this country as a leisure society.

But since then the hours have been creeping up again. The Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed that the average full-time employee is now working just under 40 hours a week. And many are now working 48 hours a week. There’s also been a rapid growth in part-time and casual employment. Over two million Australians, about 15%, now have more than one job.

And more work means less play. The average time spent on sport and recreation has been dropping since 1997, with the most popular activity for men now being watching sport on the big screen television or playing computer games.

We fought for the right to play sport, but that didn’t seem to satisfy us. So now we’ve moved on to working more, earning more, buying more, sitting more. And according to an OECD study, Australia has all the characteristics necessary to be the happiest country in the world.

But researchers have discovered that financial factors don’t have a significant effect on happiness either. In fact, one in five people in the developed countries suffer from anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses.

TRUE SATISFACTION

Sport has given Australia some of its happiest moments. But sport doesn’t necessarily make people satisfied or happy. Neither does leisure. Or money. Or sunny weather and long days at the beach.

Why is it that, regardless of how much time we have, or how much we own, or how many championships we win, we’re still not satisfied? Well, it’s because true satisfaction is connected to something outside of ourselves.

And that’s something the Bible warns us about – that the pleasures we’re seeking will never completely satisfy, because they don’t last. The author of the Bible book of Ecclesiastes, King Solomon of Israel, wrote this,

“I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure…

When I surveyed all that my hands had done, what I had toiled to achieve,

was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.” 

Ecclesiastes 2:10,11

The Bible says that in order to be really satisfied we need to have to have real security and

fulfillment, and we can’t have that without God. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God finds happiness and fulfillment here, and lives forever. You see, it’s a matter of getting our priorities, our focus, right. Notice what the Bible says in Matthew 6:19,20:

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.”

And the same message is emphasised in Proverbs 15:16. Here’s what it says:

“Better is a little with the fear of the LORD than great treasure and turmoil with it.” 

Which actually reminds us of one of the great ironies of sport and recreation. Australians, like so many others, are always reaching for that moment in the sun. But it’s a trophy that even when we get it, it still remains just out of reach. It’s a bit like the Ashes – the trophy no one ever takes home.

And so, even the fans of cricket and The Ashes, and the other great sporting events on earth, realise that fame and fortune, along with earthly treasure, are only transitory. Here today, gone tomorrow. But what the Bible has to offer lasts for eternity, and is even better than the best trophy on earth.

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CLOSING PRAYER

If you’ve enjoyed our journey to Shepherd’s Flat, Victoria and our reflections on the history of the Ashes, then be sure to join us again next week, when we’ll share another of life’s journey’s together. Until then, let’s ask God to lead us to find real meaning and purpose in our lives. Let’s pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, there’s one thing we all want in life, and that’s happiness. But sometimes we look in all the wrong places, thinking that the trophies of this world will bringus the lasting happiness we all want. Lord, help us to realise that true inner-peace and happiness can be found only in knowing Jesus. Please bless us and care for us. We ask this in Jesus name, Amen.