Twicket (a portmanteau of Twitter and Cricket) was a village

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

match, streamed world-wide on the Internet on Easter Monday, 25 April 2011, with the intention of highlighting the need for high-capacity upstream broadband to enable community content provision. This innovative exercise—claimed to be a world first—caught media attention, making BBC television news,

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, TalkSport,

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; and being written about by '' The Guardian'', The Observer and ''

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'' and mentioned on Twitter by Stephen Fry, the BBC's

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and Jonathan Agnew (BBC cricket correspondent).

Background

The event was conceived by consultant John Popham after seeing two comments on Twitter; in the first Dan Slee expressed his hopes for keeping up with a local village cricket team via Twitter. Then, Chris Conder (@cyberdoyle) mentioned that she was testing a new 30 Mbps, symmetrical internet connection, recently installed by

Lancaster University Lancaster University (legally The University of Lancaster) is a public university, public research university in Lancaster, Lancashire, Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The university was established in 1964 by royal charter, as one of several pla ...

in her village, Wray, in Lancashire, England, one of only three villages in the UK to have a symmetrical

community network A community network is a computer-based system that is intended to help support (usually geographical) communities by supporting, augmenting, and extending already existing social networks, by using networking technologies by, and for, a communit ...

. On learning from Conder that Wray was to hold a special cricket match part of the village's annual Scarecrow Festival, billed as Wray vs. the Rest of the World, Popham decided to broadcast it to the world to demonstrate the potential of high-speed synchronous broadband. He explained: In a retrospective blog post, he explained:

The match

The match was 20 overs per side (the Twenty20 format), with any batsman reaching 20 runs required to retire. Wray won the toss, and elected to bowl first. After 20 overs, The Rest of the World were 69 for 5, leaving Wray needing 70 runs off 20 overs, which they achieved with a final six, in their eleventh over, winning by 8 wickets. The post-match tug o'war contest (won by Rest of World, 2 out of 3) was also streamed live, as were interviews with various participants.

Media

The event was streamed online on

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with technical support from Birmingham company Aquila TV who used two

Sony Z1 The Sony Xperia Z1 is an Android (operating system), Android smartphone produced by Sony Mobile Communications, Sony. The Z1, at that point known by the project code name "Honami", was unveiled during a press conference in Internationale Funka ...

cameras and a DSR 350. The stream was watched by a peak of 2,733 viewers. A separate audio commentary was broadcast on-line, by Radio Youthology, attracting 1,780 listeners; their highest figure ever. Also attending were a BBC North West television news crew, whose film was broadcast the same evening. The related

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#twicket was trending on Twitter shortly before the end of the match. The match also made a star out of local commenter, Brenda, who drank

Pimm's Pimm's is an English brand of gin-based fruit cup but may also be considered a liqueur or the basis of a sling or punch. It was first produced in 1823 by James Pimm and has been owned by Diageo since 1997. Its most popular product is Pimm's No ...

throughout the game.

References

External links

* * {{YouTube, Dwf6yAhA7DM, Highlights
The Story of #Twicket
– Popham's post-event round-up.
Popham interview on BBC Radio LancasterBBC North West news feature, extracted to Vimeo
Cricket matches Sport in Lancashire Community organizing Internet-based activism Internet-related activism 2011 in England 2011 in cricket Stephen Fry