Phillip Hughes dominates Twitter in 2014

The #putoutyourbats campaign in honour of cricketer Phillip Hughes has had an extraordinary impact on Twitter.

The Late Phillip Hughes

The moving tweet to #putoutyourbats to celebrate Phillip Hughes has been seen by 125 million people. (AAP)

The moving tweet to #putoutyourbats to celebrate Phillip Hughes' life has been seen by some 125 million people.

An annual review by Twitter Australia has revealed Hughes' tragic death, Socceroos superstar Tim Cahill and teenage tennis sensation Nick Kyrgios prompted to biggest responses among Australian sports fans on the social media platform in 2014.

Sydney father Paul Taylor's simple but touching gesture to leave his bat outside his front door and tweet a photo of it as a "mark of respect" the day before Hughes' passing last month prompted an extraordinary worldwide response.

In reaching more than 125 million Twitter users, the tweet trended in 544 cities across the globe in 14 different countries.

The impact of Hughes' death was also demonstrated as tweets about the tragedy made up one third of the top 15 most retweeted posts from Australian Twitter accounts, with posts from Cricket Australia, Michael Clarke, David Warner and Brett Lee all featuring prominently.

Tweets from two of Australia's biggest sports stars - Cahill and Daniel Ricciardo - celebrating success on the global stage also generated a high volume of retweets.

Cahill's "What dreams are made of" with vision of his wonder goal against The Netherlands at the World Cup was the No.1 tweet of the year by an Australian athlete.

The second top tweet was Kyrgios's "Erm, ok then ..........." following his stunning fourth-round Wimbledon win over world No.1 Rafael Nadal.

Kyrgios's victory had a huge impact on Twitter.

The 19-year-old was mentioned more than 205,000 times in 24 hours and his first tweet after the win had 770,000 impressions.

Kyrgios also gained more than 35,000 new followers in 24 hours.

The country's biggest annual sporting event, the Australian Open tennis, also emerged as the fastest-rising hash-tagged sporting event in Australian in 2014.

But the #NRL was the most popular sport discussed on Twitter this year in Australia.


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