Rick Rycroft/AP
Trust Twitter to be the reason that the world’s most gentlemanly game is finally being brought to the attention of switched-on Americans.
NewsFeed loves its cricket and is already into the swing (geddit?) of late nights and early mornings following the heroic efforts of the England team attempting to retain the Ashes in Australia. But an American woman has hit the headlines for complaining about cricket-related messages being sent to her Twitter account. The reason? It’s called @theashes.
The Australian media has named her as Ashley Kerekes, from Massachusetts, who, unsurprisingly, said she knows nothing about the sport but nonetheless has received many tweets about the Ashes (so named because the ashes of an actual wicket was burned and placed into the urn that both countries have been competing for since 1882). Finally, enough was enough, and she tweeted that she was, “not a freaking cricket match.” And in case you were wondering, she’s already selling that slogan on t-shirts.
The world’s newest internet star told the Brisbane Times that her followers have risen from around 300 followers at the time of the first match last week to an astonishing 6,100 — and the offer of a free flight to Australia by Qantas — at the close of play on the fifth day Monday (yes, a game can last that long but this is neither the time nor place for Cricket 101.) As for the reason behind @theashes, she said her boyfriend has been calling her “the ashes” for ages but neither of them could remember the actual reason. And as she’s now getting up to speed on cricket terms, and has the best part of 10,000 followers to placate, NewsFeed can safely say that she was not only on a sticky wicket but stumped about that nickname question and she won’t bat an eyelid. Over and indeed out. Howzat?