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People rarely mention the last ball of the Ashes. That initial ball that's legendary. That stray ball that flies to slip, that elegant shot for four, that wicket, clean bowled! Last balls? I had to look them up. Moeen Ali edging a shot behind to end an innings defeat in a meaningless match in 2015; Rankin being taken at slip off Ryan Harris, Boyd Rankin featuring in his single Test at the fag-end of a rapid downfall in a clean sweep that's been full of them in 2014; a Harmison short ball glancing off Justin Langer's shoulder for runs, the only four the Australian team manage in a run chase they'll not attempt in 2005.

It's the difference between speculating how things will go, and understanding how they do. One certainty is, there's no certainty there will be a successful conclusion. For the past ten years, England's visits to Australia have concluded in failure, instead of with them. Andy Flower lost his job as manager after one humiliating defeat, in 2013-14, Silverwood lost his after a subsequent one, in 2021-22. One could assemble a couple of teams out of English cricketers who played their last Test match at the tail end of an Australian tour during the past 25 years, and still have a several individuals over to carry the drinks for either side.

This England team have not professed to worry excessively about outcomes. Stokes, like Morgan with the ODI squad before him, frequently remarks that whether or not a aerial shot is taken at the rope is secondary as whether it was the proper call to attempt it in the beginning, and during play he's pleased to applaud a bowler who concedes runs so long as they help bring the team closer to taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the key rationale Ben Stokes tried to guide his players to follow this style was so they would be in a superior situation to produce the kind of cricket he feels will perform effectively for them in Australia.

This Ashes series, for which they have been preparing for so long, already feels like the conclusion they are bound to face. It is this aggressive approach's make or break moment. And there are too many predictions of failure in the national sport for the team to escape criticism if they do suffer another bad defeat in the upcoming period. His methodology has been founded on challenging skeptics, and the flipside is it seems that there are numerous observers who would be pleased to be validated.

Given that, it's a good moment to point out that the key issue is not only where this all ends up, but whether or not we found pleasure along the way. A few years back, the English team were an utterly abject sports team. They had been overcome in four consecutive series and were trailing in the fifth one, against the Indian team, when it was suspended because of the virus. They had won a single Test match out of seventeen, and lost a dozen of them by large defeats. Eight wickets to the Black Caps at Edgbaston, A defeat by 157 runs to the Indian squad at the the London ground, an an innings defeat to Australia at the iconic ground, 10 wickets to the Caribbean side in the island nation.

England were thrashed by the Windies in Grenada in the early part of 2022 just before Joe Root stepped down as skipper.

By the final stage, after all those months of testing and preventive measures and restricted environments and constant defeats at the hands of all opponents, they were practically the most miserable and weary Test team England had ever put on to a sports ground. So much of what Stokes and McCullum have accomplished in the subsequent years was in reaction to all that, as well as the former's experiences during his five-month break from the game in 2021 when he had suffered a series of panic attacks. It was designed to emphasize to all that it was supposed to be enjoyable, if it was supposed to be anything.

That remains true now. Even when the the prestigious contest is on the line, and even if the team have finally recognized that they need to be a slightly versatile in the way they go about playing the game. Normal existence has a way of intruding, it can be challenging to retain the knowledge we acquire in our most difficult periods.

This is the national side that peeled off back-to-back final innings pursuits of 277, 299, and 296 in one period against the Black Caps; that achieved a massive 378 to overcome the Indian team that corresponding period; that became the initial visiting side to win a clean sweep in the subcontinent country; that showed resilience to a stalemate after going 2-0 down in the the series; that overcame India in the historic venue off the back of one of the finest batting displays ever executed in the the area, and then beat the Pakistani team in the location off the back of another.

It is the English squad, too, that unexpectedly end up being defeated in a Test by an innings defeat even though the other team made a modest 326; who fetched up suffering a loss in one of the better Tests ever contested after making a confident decision in the initial batting effort against the Kiwis, and then did the same thing against Australia; who were soundly beaten by a huge margin in the venue, and who were on the losing side of one of Sri Lanka's finest wins. As a unit, they have recorded some of the surprising successes, suffered some of the most embarrassing exits, made some of the unlikeliest tons, and secured some of the most surprising five-fers in the records of the English game.

No matter how this prestigious tournament concludes, they have been, in turn, astonishing, outrageous, ridiculous, exasperating, and completely, unrepentantly, unashamedly entertaining.