Cricket Fans in Fethiye - And A Bit of Inspiration

I wasn't going to do a post today. I've been browsing through our posts of 2010, pondering what sort of New Year post to do and as usual, when I start one task, I stumble across something and completely forget about what I was supposed to be doing in the first place. 



So I'm no further on with my original quest - I've not even started it actually - because I came across a post from December 2009, 'Cricket in Turkey?', and as our life is all cricket at the moment, I thought it only right to do an update. This is how it all ties in...



We started to write Turkey's For Life at the end of last November. Soon afterwards, we heard about an English guy called Oli who is a cricket fan. We heard about him because at the end of the last Ashes series, he decided to cycle from England to Australia - raising money for charity along the way - to get there in time for this Ashes series. It just so happened that he'd reached Istanbul (he managed to arrange a cricket match in front of Aya Sofya and we found out that Turkey has a Cricket Board!). We followed his blog, Twitter feed and Facebook page from there onwards and amazingly, he got to the first Ashes test on time. If you're a cricket fan and have been watching the coverage (or listening to it on Test Match Special), you've probably seen Oli being interviewed. 



I'm quite prone to exaggerating when writing about various events and achievements, but if ever the adjectives, 'amazing' and 'inspirational' should be used to describe an achievement, it's got to be for this, surely? Here's a link to Oli's last blog post which has a few photos of him at the the Gabba (that's a cricket ground in Australia for all you people out there who yawn at the thought of cricket!) being interviewed by Michael Atherton etc. Cycling to the Ashes - The End. I strongly suspect it isn't the end though - there's mention of the hunt for a publisher in the post. Hopefully one will be found soon because there's a couple of people here who will definitely be buying the book! 



Us? We're off to bed now so we can wake up at 4am and listen to England beat Australia at the Waca (that's another cricket ground in Australia) and make history...hopefully.