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Ashley Kerkes is a twenty-two year-old Massachusetts babysitter. Her nickname and her twitter handle, is "The Ashes." Turns out, much to her surprise, this is also the name of the cricket series played between England and Australia. The 66th Ashes series began on Thursday.

Cricket fans on Twitter looking for the series swamped Ms. Kerkes's site. They bombarded her with messages. After issuing a series of polite, confused denials, Ms. Kerkes finally exploded with this Tweet Thursday, "I AM NOT A FREAKING CRICKET MATCH."

Cheeky cricket fans encouraged others to follow her. Her following exploded from 300 to 8,400. According to the Associated Press, "...her attitude appeared to soften [and] by Sunday, she was inquiring about the rules of the centuries-old game."

Again, according to the A.P., this had cricket fans enthused and they started a microblogging campaign called, "Get the Ashes to the Ashes." The Australian airline Quantas stepped in and offered her free plane tickets to Australia. Vodafone Australia has since offered to pay for her match tickets.

The Ashes (Ms. Kerkes) said, "I most certainly would not object to a free trip to Australia!"

Ah, what an era...

Labels: Pop Culture, sports