The Ashes is an urn, supposedly containing the ashes of a cricket stump, which was burned after the Australians defeated England in a series of test matches. I have no idea of whether the people involved took this seriously, or if it was just a melodramatic joke. The cricket stump was meant to symbolise the death of English cricket. It is not a bad symbol come to think of it, because we have been getting our stumps - not to mention our arses - burned regularly by nearly all the other cricket playing nations in the hundred or so years since this silly ritual took place. The rivalry between England and Australia has always been particularly earnest, even though on most occasions England have barely been credible opppostion for the Aussies. It makes us enjoy the occasional aberration in the sequence of results even more!