Ashes Rumours

Sometimes I love twitter. When I have not been next to the TV or radio, I have been able to follow the ashes by watching the feed of my friends' twitter updates (I am @marcwestius), and not only do you get frequent updates, you get all sorts of colour in the form of personal opinion. Of the Ashes cricketers, Graham Swann, Jimmy Anderson and Phil Hughes are on twitter, with Hughes notably informing us of his sacking before the Edgbaston team was announced. By the way, does anyone else think that it is completely NOT in the spirit of twitter for Hughes to send his messages to his agent, who then sends them to "the IT guy" in India to update the twitter stream? Hardly fast-paced microblogging!

Anyway, one of the cool things that twitter does is aggregate opinion on various topics. By using a hashtag, status updates can be pooled by subject. One the best topics recently is #ashesrumours, started by @FollowTheAshes. There are some common themes, here are some of the best so far:

• on the same flight that david boon drank 52 cans of beer, geoff lawson drank 52 west coast coolers
• Shane Warne broke Boons 52 beer record at his daughters ballet recital.
• Sally left Brand Power as it has been taken over by a former English skipper and renamed Brand Gower.
• Justin Langer is in fact the first Terminator prototype, he went missing from a factory in Singapore in 1994
• as punishment for his poor bowling performance, @philtufnell was once made to run 10 laps of Mike Gatting
• Several Australian batsmen have been forced to sit out training after contracting Swann Flu
• @swannyg66 wanted to be the next Warney.....but he lost his mobile phone
• in honour of his father, bruce lee, brett lee once starred in a film called 'enter the batsman'
• Brett lee is the love child of a stripper name crystal and bing lee
• andrew strauss is a cyborg....but a really annoying one
• Andrew Strauss can carry 12 cricket balls clenched between his buttocks
• when don bradman met king george in 1934 he only referred to him as the 'g-dog'
• Ricky Ponting will change his nationality to a New Zealander if he becomes the 1st Aussie capt. to lose the Ashes twice in Eng
• Ricky Ponting and George W Bush swapped jobs for a period of 7 weeks in 2006 without anyone noticing
• Graeme Manou doesn't even know who he is
• Shane Watson & Sth African rugby player Percy Montgomery to play Prince Charming in Shrek 4. Darren Lehmann to play Shrek
• Shane Watson once broke his neck shaking his hair
• Shane Watson once cut his arm off whilst filing his nails
• shane watson once broke his leg padding up to bat.
• What, a buttock strain now? Shane Watson confident that his injuries are behind him
• Stuart Broad is still dressed by his mum before every match. She also does his hair.
• Nathan Hauritz likes to play with his new transformers figures for at least 30 minutes before taking the field
• graham Onions only realised he had an amusing surname when Monty Panesar started making bhaji jokes.
• eddie mcguire is also the president of paul collingwood the cricketer
• Andrew Flintoff practices his bowling style by throwing rocks at puppies.
• Umpires Billy Doctrove and Rudi Koertzen often enjoy a spliff or two during breaks
• despite being the great great grandson of alexander graham bell, ian bell has never used a telephone
• Ian Bell is so virile that he made 7 women pregnant, just by smiling at them
• shane warne's smoking makes up 50% of aus's greenhouse emissions.
• Sir Geofrey Boycott killed 17 Nazi Stormtroopers with a stick of his Grandmother's rhubarb
• Boycott to take all 11 batting slots at Edgbaston - as the only man who can do it properly.
• Boycs once killed a man with his bare hands for batting 'like a woman'
• Rumour has it that Mitchell Johnson can bowl
• Ravi Bopara can, in fact, bat.
• If he wanted to, Mitchell Johnson could probably hit a barn door at 10 paces
• Marcus North is taping a series of commercials in which he sells GPS devices to Mitchell Johnson.
• 3 women died of excitement at Lords, when Jimmy Anderson smiled at them
• At Lords, the Queen slipped her phone number to @JimmyAnderson9
• Daniel Radcliffe to be announced as 12th man, with a special brief to fill in for J Anderson if required.
• @jimmyanderson9 was once mistaken for derek zoolander. Actually, it may have been twice.
• The Headingley Test of 1981 was re-enacted on location in the Arizona desert when tapes of the original were lost.
• when simon katich wears a woollen jumper, the static from his chest hair powers his car.
• Richie Benaud invented the Flipper in honour of his favourite TV show.
• The pitch at Edgbaston is so wet that one of the rollers sank.
• Ian Thorpe will be 12th man for Australia at Edgbaston.
• Swimming googles have been supplied to all the players and officials for start of play at Edgbaston
• Phil Hughes had a small role as a House Elf in the new Harry Potter film
• It wasn't only Phil Hughes in the Potter film - Andrew McDonald played one of the Weasley brothers
• stuart broad was also in harry potter as malfoy's double. But he just couldn't look evil.

Looking forward to more!

Who will win the Ashes from here?

With England up 1-0 after 2 Tests, can Australia fight back? Or is the momentum now against them? They fought back from 1-0 down in 1997 in England, but that was a vastly different team. Have a vote in our poll - we'll shut it down just before the 3rd Test to capture what people are thinking at this stage of the series.

Do India have the balls to beat Australia?

To me, Australia's 2005 Ashes loss was an aberration. It should not have happened. A lot has been said about the reasons why, and I think a lot of it came down to "reverse swing bowling" to over simplify the issue. There has been quite a bit of talk about how it was that the English were able to engineer such reverse swing, with speculation ranging from a specific type of breath mints, to the English pitches, to the type of cricket balls used.

Whatever it was, it was something that wasn't present when the English visited Australia in late 2006.

Anyway, it seems like the Indians are using the same balls that the English used and there is speculation that this is what has given them the winning edge.

Personally I think it's no excuse for Australia not to be able to play reverse swing, they should be able to use tennis balls with duct tape on one side for all I care, I don't see how a powerful cricket nation like Australia can't deal with reverse swing.

From my point of view, the only way a specific cricket ball was a factor in our Ashes loss was when Glenn McGrath stepped on one during training before the second test and injured himself.

That's what lost us the Ashes.

The only way a specific cricket ball will lose us the series in India this time around, is if they put one in the hands of Jason Krejza.

Thankfully, we've dodged that bullet - for now.

Warne to the rescue?

I like the thought of having Warnie frozen in a glass container with the words "Break in case of Emergency" written on it. Warnie has gotten some attention over comments he made that "if required" he would don the creams again and roll the arm over for Australia in the Ashes.

Good ol' Warnie, when it suits him, he'll play for us. I'm not complaining - the guy is so bloody good, I'll gladly take him whenever he wants to. Any terms he makes, they're going to be worth it.

Of course, I don't think we need to panic just yet. MacGill is still around, let's see how he goes against the Windies. I have no idea what the future holds for our prospects with Beau Casson, but we're not quite at def con 2 yet, so Warnie can stick to taking the Royals to the IPL finals.