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Listening to: nothing
So in case you've been living under a rock for the past few days, the Ashes have begun. Now I know that a lot of non-English/Aussie cricket fans like to rubbish the series as being over-hyped and overrated, but I think there's something magical about the tradition, the history and the rivalry. And this time we've even got good cricket! Day 1 saw a hatrick for Siddle and a lower order batting collapse for England, Day 2 was pretty even (if I recall correctly), Day 3 saw a batting masterclass from Mike Hussey and Brad Haddin, much to England's chagrin...followed by a lower order collapse for Australia (which went pretty much unnoticed, for obvious reasons). And then when all hope was lost for England, Day 4 saw some brilliant batting against what must have been a rather mediocre Aussie bowling attack...I can't say for sure, 'cos I went to sleep when they stopped for lunch.
Which brings me closer to the point of this post (there is one, promise). I've found that music is pretty ineffective at keeping me awake during late night thesis-writing, but a potent mix of Test Match Special on BBC 5live Sports Extra and the #theashes hashtag on twitter is exactly what the doctor ordered. It's quite a bizarre feeling - in reality I'm sitting in my flat, all alone, listening to the commentary...but with the live twitter feed from people who are listening to the same commentary or watching on TV, it's like I'm in a room full of cricket fans, cheering, jeering and discussing every minute detail of the match. And considering the time difference, you know that everyone tweeting from the UK is a genuine cricket fan, which is always nice. It's all general camaraderie, lots of retweeting of funny quips (of which there are a lot) and friendly banter.
Ah yes, banter...the reason I started typing this post. Ladies and gentlemen, meet @theashes. She's some girl in the States...and possibly therefore completely clueless about the significance of her username, especially over these few weeks. What probably started out as a mistake (someone typing '@' instead of '#' when tagging the match in a tweet) has turned into a bit of a meme. I'm not sure how many followers she had before her account was 'discovered', but at the time of this post, she has 3,914. And I don't even want to try and count how many mentions she gets...every second. Of course she tweeted this early on in the hope we'd take a hint -
- wishful thinking, eh? ;-)
I hope she takes it in good spirit...it is just friendly banter after all. And if it gets too much (which I suspect it has already) she could just change her username. Although life would be a lot better for all her fans if she didn't ;-).
Anyway, 10mins before final day's play. I'm gonna go get settled into my thesis. Come on England!
So in case you've been living under a rock for the past few days, the Ashes have begun. Now I know that a lot of non-English/Aussie cricket fans like to rubbish the series as being over-hyped and overrated, but I think there's something magical about the tradition, the history and the rivalry. And this time we've even got good cricket! Day 1 saw a hatrick for Siddle and a lower order batting collapse for England, Day 2 was pretty even (if I recall correctly), Day 3 saw a batting masterclass from Mike Hussey and Brad Haddin, much to England's chagrin...followed by a lower order collapse for Australia (which went pretty much unnoticed, for obvious reasons). And then when all hope was lost for England, Day 4 saw some brilliant batting against what must have been a rather mediocre Aussie bowling attack...I can't say for sure, 'cos I went to sleep when they stopped for lunch.
Which brings me closer to the point of this post (there is one, promise). I've found that music is pretty ineffective at keeping me awake during late night thesis-writing, but a potent mix of Test Match Special on BBC 5live Sports Extra and the #theashes hashtag on twitter is exactly what the doctor ordered. It's quite a bizarre feeling - in reality I'm sitting in my flat, all alone, listening to the commentary...but with the live twitter feed from people who are listening to the same commentary or watching on TV, it's like I'm in a room full of cricket fans, cheering, jeering and discussing every minute detail of the match. And considering the time difference, you know that everyone tweeting from the UK is a genuine cricket fan, which is always nice. It's all general camaraderie, lots of retweeting of funny quips (of which there are a lot) and friendly banter.
Ah yes, banter...the reason I started typing this post. Ladies and gentlemen, meet @theashes. She's some girl in the States...and possibly therefore completely clueless about the significance of her username, especially over these few weeks. What probably started out as a mistake (someone typing '@' instead of '#' when tagging the match in a tweet) has turned into a bit of a meme. I'm not sure how many followers she had before her account was 'discovered', but at the time of this post, she has 3,914. And I don't even want to try and count how many mentions she gets...every second. Of course she tweeted this early on in the hope we'd take a hint -
 |
| Yeah right...you can't fool us! |
I hope she takes it in good spirit...it is just friendly banter after all. And if it gets too much (which I suspect it has already) she could just change her username. Although life would be a lot better for all her fans if she didn't ;-).
Anyway, 10mins before final day's play. I'm gonna go get settled into my thesis. Come on England!
