Even if Australia fail to win the last Test against England [Images] this weekend and lose the series for the first time since 1987, they will still welcome the Ashes urn home next year.

Cricket's most famous trophy will tour Australia during the 2006-2007 series, only the second time the fragile little vessel has left England's shores, its guardians at Lord's said.

Australian fans have often complained that, although their world champion team have held the Ashes for the last 18 years and have won more series than England over the last 129 years, the trophy has been kept on the other side of the world.

A scheduled trip during the last Ashes series three years ago was called off after cracks were discovered in the 10 centimetre urn and it was deemed too delicate to travel.

It has since been repaired and will be displayed in Australia during England's 2006-2007 tour, its Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) guardians said.

The urn has only once before been displayed in Australia, in 1988 to celebrate the bicentenary of European settlement.

The term Ashes was coined after England lost to Australia, for the first time on home soil at The Oval, where the current deciding test is underway, on August 29 1882.

The Sporting Times carried a mock obituary to English cricket which concluded: "The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia."

The Ashes urn was then presented to Ivo Bligh, who captained the next English team to tour Australia, by a group of Melbourne women who burned one of the bails used in the third Test and put the remains in the little brown pot.