flukily played the next one, tried to hit the last ball of the over, but missed, and it bowled him. The game was won by seven runs." Studd had not faced a delivery. Peate later explained his actions, although there are numerous accounts of his actual words. Thankfully, they do not vary much from "Ah couldn't troost Maister Stood!" One spectator died of heart failure at the end of the Australian innings (rather than during the tense finishing stages, as has often been claimed); another is said to have bitten through his brother-in-law's umbrella handle. For the first time, an England side had lost a Test match in England. Spofforth, having taken seven for 44 in this innings (making it fourteen for ninety in the match), bowled his last eleven overs for two runs and four wickets, those two runs and four wickets coming off his last seven deliveries. He was carried shoulder-high from the field. His break-backs had been almost unplayable on this wicket; indeed, Giffen believed that every single one of them would have destroyed the stumps had not the bat got in the way. After the match, a mock obituary was famously inserted in the Sporting Times, which read: "In Affectionate Remembrance of ENGLISH CRICKET, which died at the Oval on 29 August 1882, Deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances R.I.P. N.B. – The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia." Australia in England 1882. Match length: 3 days. Balls per over: 4. One-off Test. Result: Australia win. Bligh reclaims the Ashes 1882/3 Bligh originally intended to tour Australia in 1882/3 with a team consisting only of Cambridge University cricketers. (Oxford and Cambridge Universities had very highly rated teams at the time.) This plan did not come fully to fruition, however, and Bligh ended up taking a team of eight amateurs and four professionals on the long voyage. Bligh was contracted to play three games against the same team that had beaten A N Hornby's side in England during the 1882 season, and he responded to the joke about the Ashes at dinner parties by saying his team would "beard the kangaroo in his den and try and recover those ashes". In response, at a banquet at the Melbourne Town Hall, Australian captain Billy Murdoch said, "Our boys fairly won the ashes and we confidently rely on them to