The Studd brothers, Sir John Edward Kynaston, George (GB) and Charles (CT), were Victorian gentleman cricketers, educated at Eton and Cambridge. These three brothers represented Eton in the Eton v Harrow annual needle match and represented Cambridge at cricket and dominated the Cambridge cricket scene in the early 1880s.

The Ashes is a men's Test cricket series played biennially between England and Australia. The term originated in a satirical obituary published in a British newspaper, The Sporting Times, immediately after Australia's 1882 victory at The Oval, its first Test win on English soil. The obituary stated that English cricket had died, and that "the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia". The mythical ashes immediately became associated with the 1882–83 series played in Australia, before which the English captain Ivo Bligh had vowed to "regain those ashes". The English media therefore dubbed the tour the quest to regain the Ashes.