The Ashes

I have nothing to add to the history of the Ashes [Mythconceptions, FT362:25], but I was reminded that when I was about five or six I was convinced that the ‘ashes’ that were so much talked about on the radio were the ashes of the losing team, who were slaughtered and cremated so their remains could be handed to the winners. I didn’t think this at all odd at the time; it was just something that happened in the grown-up world. Mercifully, perhaps, I never mentioned this theory to my parents, and gradually I realised that cricket was not nearly as exciting as I had thought, a conviction that has never left me. Tina Rath London