Lives in Cricket No 29 - AN Hornby

10 The Ashes are born all-rounder Tom Horan for keeping the Lancashire side in the field despite falling rain, as Australia made the 30 runs they needed for victory against Lancashire at Old Trafford in the twenty-first game of their tour in June of that year. Horan wrote: Luckily, the rain did not prevent the match being finished, but it is only fair to say that while the last 30 runs were being made it was raining in a manner that has often caused the field to be cleared in Melbourne and Sydney. Mr Hornby, however, with the true spirit of a sportsman and a gentleman, kept his men in the field, and afterwards admitted that the best team won. But despite Horan’s assertion that Hornby wasn’t good enough to be in the side, Hornby still wouldn’t have expected the reaction of some of the English media to England’s defeat. The fallout led to one of his lasting legacies to cricket and it came in the shape of a diminutive urn. It is part of cricketing folklore that the Sporting Times’ mock obituary, published on 2 September, gave rise to the foundation of the Ashes. Written by Reginald Brooks, under the pseudonym ‘Bloobs’, it read: ‘In affectionate remembrance of English cricket which died at The Oval, 29th August, 1882. Deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances, RIP. NB The body will be cremated and the Ashes taken to Australia.’ There were echoes of those sentiments almost exactly 129 years later – in August 2011 – when the Times of India mournfully acknowledged India’s fall from top spot in the ICC Test world rankings after going 3-0 down in the four-match series against England with these words: ‘RIP the world’s No. 1 Test team.’ India, beaten by an innings at Edgbaston, had held the No.1 position since 6 December 2009. But, back in 1882, the Sporting Times wasn’t the first in the field. Two days earlier, in the 31 August edition of Cricket: A Weekly Record of the Game , there was a similar outpouring of grief over the state of English cricket. Edited by Charles Alcock, the man who created the FA Cup in his guise as secretary of the Football Association, the publication produced the following ‘death notice’: ‘Sacred to the memory of England’s supremacy in the cricket-field which expired on the 29 th day of August at The Oval. Its end was Peate.’ Even Punch got in on the act with this poem which it printed in its