As the “Frog Days of Summer” are upon us here on the Northern Plains, our collective attention (well, at least mine) turns to the UK where the Ashes have started. The Ashes refers to the diminutive trophy that goes to the winner of the England-Australia, test-match cricket series. This series happens twice every four years and alternates between English and Australian summer.

As editor of North Dakota Quarterly, I have this fantasy of publishing a series of blog posts that consider cricket as a key critique of the modern world. More than that, these posts would argue that cricket offers a view of the life and the world that shares many important aspects with reading and writing the kind of  fiction, poetry, and non-fiction we publish in the Quarterly. Unfortunately, being editor of the Quarterly and full time faculty at the University of North Dakota means that I rarely have time to produce the kind of polished essays and work that can stand alongside the outstanding work of NDQ contributors.

I do, however, have the password to this blog and a blog of my own. If you want to know why I think The Ashes are important for every denizen of our modern world, go and check out this post on my personal blog today. It’s rough, but I my ideas are all there. And if you still find it intriguing, check out some of my other rough-and-ready writing on cricket here (comparing cricket to the NBA) and here (on anachronistic books and cricket) and here (an earlier argument why we should all watch the Ashes).

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Bill Caraher is the editor of North Dakota Quarterly and the publisher at The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota. In his spare time, he’s an Associate Professor of History at the University of North Dakota with a specialty in Late Antiquity and field archaeology.