LONDON (Reuters)
The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) has rejected calls from Australia's Prime Minister John Howard that the Ashes should be taken home by Steve Waugh's side after winning the series against England for a seventh time in a row. Iain Wilton, head of communications at the MCC, said: "Because of their age and fragility, we believe the Ashes' proper home is the museum at Lord's. We don't envisage that they should regularly travel between England and Australia.

He emphasised that they belonged to the club rather than the England and Wales Cricket Board, adding: "They are completely and utterly irreplaceable."

Australia secured the Ashes earlier this month after winning the first three matches of the five-Test series. England have not won the trophy since 1986-87.

Earlier on Friday, Howard, echoing comments by Waugh, said the trophy "belongs in Australia". He told the Australian Associated Press: "I ask our English friends to look at it this way: If the urn were to come to Australia, that would give them a much greater incentive to get it back."

The News of the World also backed Waugh, saying the urn was "now a source of embarrassment to English cricket, serving only to emphasise our failings".

Wilton, however, said the MCC had presented a crystal trophy to the Australians after their last home victory over England. "That's the trophy that is currently at stake," he said, adding: "The Ashes have been to Australia in the past, most recently for the bicentenary Test (in 1988)."

The small Ashes urn is the centrepiece of the Lord's museum. It was created after England won the third Test of the 1882-83 series in Australia. A group of Melbourne women burnt a bail and put the ashes in an urn which was presented to England captain Ivo Bligh.

Bligh's widow subsequently gave the urn, around four inches high, to the MCC in 1927, since when it has been kept on display in the club's museum.

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