New Zealand

Vernon Philander is still having a fine old time

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We had suggested that a few away Tests would see Vernon Philander’s bowling average swell like a space hopper at altitude. What we hadn’t considered was that Philander’s first away Tests would be in New Zealand.

You get some good Test matches in New Zealand. The home side have secured a first innings lead even though none of their batsmen got past the forties. We mean ‘the forties’ and not ‘the Forties’ there. No-one’s having to combine Test cricket with a role in the Home Guard.

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23 comments

    1. Dammit thesmudge, I was going to come out of commenting retirement to make the very same joke.

      Now KC’s website is trying to sell me dating with ‘online ladies’, all of whom appear to be from the PRC. What gives? You cannot blame my search history, as this is my work computer. Unless search strings including POMC, leptin and menlanocortin receptor 4 are particularly HOT.
      They’re hot right?
      Damn hot. Hawwt even.

    3. Sorry, Ne, but this site probably has an unusually high proportion of readers with prolonged exposure to Radio 4 Long Wave, so it was always going to be a scramble.

    4. I don’t understand what any of you are talking about.

      Do these things have Facebook pages?

    5. Howe-zat – I think it’s a shipping forecast joke – you know, that stupid thing that is guaranteed to always start on R4 longwave 2 mind after I turn TMS on?

  2. Vernon is just sticking to what his first grade teacher/coach told him – line and length boy!
    Cricket can be so simple at times..

  3. Do space hoppers swell at altitude?

    I’m trying to get my head around the physics that would make that happen. I’m drawing a blank.

    Perhaps KC can change the laws of physics.

    But then, as Scotty in Star Trek frequently told us, “you can nay change the laws of physics”.

    2. If a space hopper were filled with air at sea level and then taken to the top of Everest, surely it would swell due to the lower pressure up there?

    3. Your Space Hopper isn’t sealed? Then all the air will simply escape and it will deflate.

      Your Space Hopper is sealed? Then why is the ambient air pressure going to impact?

      But I was a straight C guy at physics.

      Someone who knows owt should chime in.

    4. Great, now I feel the need to listen to Julian Cope. Reckon many of you are too young to understand why.

  4. The lower atmospheric pressure exerts less force on the outside of the hopper in question.
    So the sealed space hopper still has the same pressure on the inside but less pressure on the outside = expanding space hopper.
    no? nae? nay? neigh?

    1. I find it hard to believe that the difference in air pressure is likely to impact on a properly inflated hopper. Perhaps, if the hopper has not been well inflated, there might be room for the hopper to become a little more taut, but surely the pressure of taut plastic/rubbery stuff is much much greater than the difference in air pressure.

      I want to see equations.

      I want to see the results of experiments.

      I want someone to explain how anti-matter and neutrinos fit in with all this.

      I’m not asking much, I just want to understand the world around me that little bit better.

    2. it’s not right that you should be demanding someone to prove KCs statement is plausible.
      KCs word is gospel unless proven otherwise.
      The onus is on you to prove that it was a rubbish anology. We want to see experiments, equations and explanations of antimatter.

    3. The maths isn’t hard, but finding the data is. The internet is a curious thing. I can find out how many first class catches Sir Alec Douglas-Home took in a few clicks, but trying to find the wall thickness and inflation pressure of a space hopper? Impossible!

  5. …and if the laws of physics answer is that the space hopper would expand the tiniest, tiniest bit at altitude, does that mean that KC only anticipated Vernon Philander’s bowling average increasing by a tiny amount when he said “like a space hopper at altitude”?

    From 12.82 to 13.15, for example?

    1. Or to the point where it exploded.

      A friend once said to us: “Physics is a branch of the dark arts.”

      Hope that helps.

  6. The clue here is in the name – Space Hopper. All space hoppers are probably designed to be used primarily in Outer Space. If they were designed for use on the street outside your house, they’d be called Street Hoppers. Therefore, it is probably certain that all space hoppers must have a pressure release mechanism that maintains a constant pressure differential between the outside and the inside, set at the design level of bounceability no matter what altitude they are at.

    But here’s the thing. From my experience, that bouncability level is always set at “pointlessly low”. 99.99734% of the required force for the next bounce comes from your legs. The space hopper’s main job seems to be just to make you look slightly less stupid than if you were just bouncing around without one.

    1. I rubbed shoulders once with Julian Cope, at a The Sound concert in 1980. A few months later, I saw The Teardrop Explodes live and thought they were mint.

      Thanks for the memories, Jayne.

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