There has been some comment recently about the unprecedented back-to-back Ashes, with two series taking place almost directly after each other.
Kevin Pietersen has suggested the English side are mentally fragile because of it.
While I don’t doubt some of his reasoning, the journalist may be incorrect in suggesting the scheduling is unprecedented.
So, have there been back-to-back Ashes before?
Certainly almost every series in the 1800s was a back-to-back Ashes as there were just two Test playing nations until South Africa joined the fold.
This can be seen most clearly in the series that gave birth to the Ashes.
The single Test of 1882 where English cricket died at the Oval was August 29th.
Ivo Bligh spoke of recovering the Ashes at a Melbourne function on November 15th 1882. The English side actually beat the Australians at home who were still returning from the UK, so that’s as back-to-back as you can get.
But what of more 20th century times?
In 1920-21 England and Australia played 10 Tests in the space of eight months, exactly five in Australia and five in the UK.
That sounds familiar. By the way, Australia won the two series 8-0, including the first 5-0 Ashes whitewash in Australia.
In 1974-75 there were another 10 Tests in 10 months (admittedly the 1975 World Cup in England took place in-between, but incredibly by today’s standards this took up just 14 days, directly in the middle.)
The current “unprecedented” back-to-back Ashes series, which was interspersed with a seven match ODI series in India for the Aussies in October and November, doesn’t seem so unprecedented.
It might have been a while since the last one, but certainly not unprecedented.
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