MCC says Ashes won't be given to Australia despite Howard plea

The fragile Ashes urn will never be handed to Australia despite pleas from cricket fans including Prime Minister John Howard.

The Marylebone Cricket Club said it would refuse to part with the original 120-year-old urn even after Australia's eighth consecutive Ashes series win.

"The Ashes urn is not and never has been a trophy competed for between Australia and England," MCC spokesman Iain Wilton said on Tuesday.

"The trophy is the Waterford crystal trophy which will be presented to Steve Waugh at the end of the series."

But Mr Howard renewed calls for the Ashes urn to be put on display in Australia, describing it as the most treasured sporting trophy in the eyes of most Australians.

"While the location of the Ashes trophy is certainly not going to strain diplomatic relations between Australian and the United Kingdom, I strongly support the Australian Cricket Board's efforts to allow the nation's cricket fans to view the hallowed trophy," he said.

"It would be a real gesture on the part of English cricket authorities for it to come to Australia. It would be a welcome piece of symbolism that would not be lost on the cricketing world."

Opposition Leader Simon Crean also backed the calls for the Ashes urn to come to Australia, saying it was no different to any other sporting trophy.

"It should have been here for a long time," he said. "Just about every other great sporting activity operates on the basis that the winner claims the trophy and houses the trophy.

But the MCC owns the 10-centimetre tall urn which was presented to England captain Ivo Bligh in 1882-83 and displays it in its museum at Lord's in London.

It had planned to take the urn on a tour of Australia this summer but was advised it was too fragile and could suffer irreparable damage if it was moved and subjected to changes in humidity and pressure.

Australians may still get a chance to see the wooden urn briefly next year, but Mr Wilton said it would never be held permanently in Australia or used as a trophy for series winners.

"We remain committed to displaying the original urn in Australia," Mr Wilton said.

"We are hoping in a year's time to take it to Australia to commemorate the centenary of the first MCC tour."

The urn has only once left London when it was taken to Australia for the 1988 bicentennial celebrations.

A large crystal trophy based on its shape was commissioned in 1998 even though Australian teams have regularly held up a life-sized replica urn after winning recent series.

Waugh's team paraded one of the two replicas in existence around the WACA ground in Perth after winning the third Test last Sunday.

After Australia beat England at The Oval in London in August 1882, the Sporting Times newspaper ran an obituary to English cricket saying "The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia".

Later that year, when England won the series 2-1 in Australia, a group of Melbourne women burned a bail used in the third Test, put the ashes in an urn and gave it to Bligh.