Adelaide Oval, Day 2, sun sharp enough to peel paint.
Plastic pints everywhere, Barmy Army already half-feral.
Adam, Marcin, Anna and Isobel parked under the scoreboard, pretending the heat is “character-building.” England ticking along nicely, which everyone knows is a bad omen.
Adam:
Look at that—England have a bat. Every Pom in the ground acting like we’re watching the Renaissance.
Isobel (eyebrow raised):
Give it a session and they’ll invent new ways to self-harm with a cricket bat. England’s real sport is optimism management.
Anna:
Systems want stability, right? England wants to pretend. It’s tradition. Cultural recursion. Like warm beer or colonial denial. Australia has the better bowling attack.
Marcin:
Exactly and catches win matches. There’s a structural preference for stability, coherence—hold shape, don’t lose your head.
Adam:
That’s what I mean. Everyone says they want stability until stability turns up. Then they get bored and reverse-sweep into a fielder at deep point. They see a bit of a chance at a decent score and try to hurry it up too much:
“Ooh, that scares me—better improvise chaos.”
Chanting, pack of Barmy Army lads, shirts off, beer-sweaty, approach like migrating wildebeest.
BA Lad #1:
It’s comin’ home, boys! Bazball, ashes, world domination!
Anna:
Sweetheart, England struggles to hold a batting partnership longer than you could keep it up.
BA Lad #2 (ignoring the insult):
Bazball is freedom! Bazball is preference maximisation!
Marcin:
No mate, Bazball is what happens when short-term dopamine outruns system stability. It’s like taking financial advice from a pokie machine. It’s like f*cking crictok.
Isobel:
If England were a macroeconomic model, the RBA would hike interest rates out of fear of emotional volatility.
BA Lad #1:
Nah—we like livin’ on the edge. That’s entertainment.
Adam:
And that’s the point. Cricket prefer coherence—because that’s how you last five days.
Humans prefer panic, 50 overs, 100 balls, 20 overs— it all gets them in, and gets them sportshorny, because panic tastes like ego and sugar. Destruction is the appetite of the soul.
Anna:
Wasn’t that a gunners song? And collapse is sexy now. Everyone wants front-row seats to the explosion. You lot didn’t come here for a draw—you came here for trauma bonding.
Isobel:
Psychology 101: When stability feels dull, instability becomes recreational.
BA Lad #2 (puffed up):
Oi, is she calling England unstable? Beats mbeing løocked up in your house for 13 months for no good reason, God, if we are going to die at least let us have a good time doing it!
Isobel:
Fari enough, that must’ve sucked and I can’t believe we let them do it, power hungry f*cks. But England batting darling, I’m calling that geologically temporary.
Scoreboard ticks again—four through cover.
The Barmy boys cheer like it’s destiny.
Adam:
There we go—false signal stability. Encourages delusion. Like a market rally before a crash.
Marcin:
The preference for stability is real, but local preferences hijack it.
Short-term emotional optimisation kills long-term coherence.
Anna:
That’s civilisation—and also English cricket.
Isobel (raising her cup):
To systemic denial, gentlemen.
Barmy Army lads (raising theirs):
To Bazball!
Adam:
And to the inevitable collapse we Aussies call hope.
Ceteris Paribus 