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People rarely mention the last ball of the Ashes. The opening delivery that's renowned. That stray ball that goes to the slips, that cover drive for four, that dismissal, shattering the stumps! Concluding moments? I had to look them up. Moeen Ali edging a shot behind to conclude a batting effort loss in a inconsequential game in 2015; Boyd Rankin being taken at slip off Ryan Harris, Rankin playing in his sole Test at the tail-end of a rapid downfall in a clean sweep that's been plentiful in 2014; a Harmison short ball ricocheting away Justin Langer's shoulder for runs, the only four the Australian team manage in a target they'll not undertake in 2005.

It distinguishes between questioning how things will go, and seeing how they do. One undeniable fact, there's no certainty there will be a positive outcome. For the last decade, the English visits to Australia have finished in defeat, instead of with them. Flower was removed as head coach after an embarrassing rout, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood lost his after another, in 2021-22. One could assemble a pair of XIs out of English cricketers who featured in their final Test match at the back end of an trip Down Under during the last quarter-century, and additionally have a few players over to act as substitutes for either side.

Stokes' squad have never claimed to worry excessively about results. Ben Stokes, like Morgan with the one-day side before him, consistently states that whether or not a lofted drive is grabbed near the fence is secondary as whether it was the proper call to attempt it in the first place, and during play he's happy to clap a delivery man who gives away boundaries so long as they bringing the team closer to taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the key rationale Ben Stokes tried to instruct his squad to play this way was so they would be in a more advantageous state to execute the brand of the game he feels will succeed for them in Australia.

This Ashes series, for which they have been preparing for so long, already appears as the conclusion they cannot escape. It is Bazball's decisive moment. And there are an abundance of “I told you so’s” in the national sport for the team to get away with it if they do experience another bad defeat in the coming weeks. The captain's strategy has been founded on defying expectations, and the flipside is it appears there are plenty of people who would be thrilled to be validated.

In light of this, it's a suitable occasion to highlight that the important question is not only where this concludes, but regardless of whether we found pleasure along the way. A few years back, the English team were an thoroughly poor national side. They had been beaten in a quartet of successive tournaments and were falling behind in the fifth one, against India, when it was suspended because of Covid. They had won exactly one Test match out of seventeen, and lost a dozen of them by large defeats. An eight-wicket defeat to the Black Caps at the historic venue, 157 runs to India at the the London ground, an innings and 14 runs to Australia at Melbourne, A defeat by ten wickets to the Windies in the scenic location.

The team was soundly beaten by the Caribbean team in the venue in March 2022 just before Joe Root stepped down as skipper.

By the end, after all those stretches of testing and social distancing and biosecure bubbles and endless beatings at the hands of all opponents, they were virtually the most dejected and weary Test team England had ever put on to a cricket field. A significant portion of what Ben Stokes and McCullum have achieved in the following period was in a consequence of all that, as well as the Stokes' personal encounters during his hiatus from the game in 2021 when he had experienced a series of panic attacks. It was created to remind everyone that it was supposed to be entertaining, if it was meant to be something.

It still is now. Despite when the Ashes is on the line, and although the team have eventually come to agree that they need to be a somewhat adaptable in the way they tackle performing. Everyday life has a way of imposing, it can be hard to retain the knowledge we acquire in our most difficult periods.

This is the England team that peeled off consecutive fourth-innings chases of three challenging targets in one period against the Kiwis; that scored a huge total to defeat India that identical season; that became the initial visiting side to win a whitewash in the subcontinent country; that fought back to a draw after going trailing by two matches in the the contest; that defeated the Indian team in the southern city off the back of one of the greatest innings ever played in the the region, and then defeated Pakistan in the city off the back of another.

It is the English squad, too, that unexpectedly end up losing a Test by an innings defeat even though the rivals made a relatively low total; who ended up being defeated in one of the better Tests ever staged after making a bold declaration in the first innings against the Kiwis, and then followed suit against the Aussies; who were soundly beaten by a massive 434 runs in the Indian city, and who were on the unsuccessful part of one of the island nation's finest wins. Collectively, they have secured some of the most improbable victories, endured some of the poorest performances, scored some of the unlikeliest centuries, and achieved some of the most startling five-wicket hauls in the annals of the national sport.

No matter how this historic contest unfolds, they have been, successively, incredible, outrageous, absurd, infuriating, and entirely, without regret, unashamedly entertaining.