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Nobody talks about the last ball of the Ashes. The opening delivery that's legendary. That stray ball that goes to the slips, that cover drive for four, that fallen stump, clean bowled! Final deliveries? I had to research them. Ali edging a shot behind to conclude a batting effort rout in a dead rubber in 2015; Boyd Rankin being caught in the slips off Harris, Rankin playing in his one and only Test at the tail-end of a 30-over collapse in a 5-0 whitewash that's been full of them in 2014; a Harmison bouncer ricocheting away Justin Langer's shoulder for runs, the sole boundary Australia manage in a target they'll not undertake in 2005.

It's the difference between speculating how things will go, and understanding how they do. One certainty is, there's no guarantee there will be a happy ending. For the past ten years, England's Australian tours have concluded in failure, as opposed to with them. Flower was dismissed as head coach after an embarrassing rout, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood was let go after another, in 2021-22. You can make a couple of teams out of England players who played their last Test match at the tail end of an tour to Australia during the previous 25 years, and even have a several individuals over to carry the drinks for either side.

This England team have not asserted to care too much about outcomes. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the ODI squad before him, always says that whether or not a aerial shot is grabbed near the fence isn't as important as if it was the correct choice to play it in the first place, and during play he's quick to praise a pitcher who gives away boundaries so long as they are bringing the team nearer to taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the very reason Ben Stokes tried to guide his players to follow this style was so they would be in a superior situation to execute the brand of the game he believes will perform effectively for them in Australia.

This Ashes series, for which they have been planning extensively, already seems like the conclusion they cannot escape. It is this aggressive approach's decisive moment. And there are too many predictions of failure in the national sport for the team to escape criticism if they do suffer another poor loss in the upcoming period. Stokes's approach has been predicated on challenging skeptics, and the other side is it feels as if there are plenty of people who would be pleased to be shown right.

Considering this, it's a appropriate time to emphasize that the key issue is not only where this all ends up, but regardless of whether we found pleasure along the way. Four years ago, England were an utterly abject national side. They had been defeated in four consecutive series and were trailing in the fifth, against India, when it was halted because of the pandemic. They had won only one Test match out of seventeen, and lost a dozen of them by embarrassing margins. An eight-wicket defeat to the Black Caps at the historic venue, 157 runs to the subcontinent team at the Oval, an a comprehensive loss to the Aussie team at the MCG, A defeat by ten wickets to West Indies in the scenic location.

England were thrashed by West Indies in the venue in the early part of 2022 just before Joe Root resigned as leader.

By the end, after all those months of nasal swabs and isolation and restricted environments and repeated losses at the hands of everyone they played, they were virtually the most disheartened and careworn Test team the English cricket board had ever sent out to a sports ground. So much of what Stokes and Brendon McCullum have achieved in the years since was in a consequence of all that, as well as the former's individual trials during his time away from the game in 2021 when he had endured a series of panic attacks. It was designed to make people recall that it was intended as fun, if it was intended as anything at all.

This continues to be the case now. Although the the historic series 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 approach competing. Daily routines has a way of crowding in, it can be difficult to hold on to the lessons we learn in our lowest moments.

Here is the England team that peeled off back-to-back final innings pursuits of significant totals in one summer against the Kiwis; that made 378 to defeat India that corresponding period; that became the first touring team to win a whitewash in the host nation; that fought back to a stalemate after going trailing by two matches in the Ashes; that beat India in the southern city off the back of one of the greatest innings ever performed in the subcontinent, and then defeated the Pakistani team in Multan off the back of another.

Here we have the national side, too, that somehow end up being defeated in a Test by an innings defeat even though the rivals made a relatively low total; who fetched up being defeated in one of the finer contests ever contested after making a cocksure declaration in the first innings against the Black Caps, and then followed suit against Australia; who were thrashed by a huge margin in the venue, and who were on the losing side of one of Sri Lanka's greatest victories. As a unit, they have recorded some of the most improbable victories, experienced some of the poorest performances, scored some of the most improbable hundreds, and taken some of the most surprising five-wicket hauls in the history of the national sport.

No matter how this prestigious tournament shakes out, they have been, in turn, incredible, outrageous, absurd, exasperating, and entirely, without regret, unashamedly entertaining.