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People rarely mention the final delivery of the Ashes. That initial ball that's famous. That stray ball that goes to the slips, that beautiful stroke for four, that dismissal, clean bowled! Last balls? I had to look them up. Ali slicing a drive behind to end an innings loss in a meaningless match in 2015; Boyd Rankin being taken at slip off Harris, Boyd Rankin participating in his sole Test at the tail-end of a 30-over collapse in a 5-0 whitewash that's been commonplace in 2014; a Steve Harmison rising delivery deflecting off Langer's shoulder for runs, the single four the Aussies achieve in a target they'll never get to make in 2005.

It distinguishes between questioning how things will go, and seeing how they do. One thing's certain, there's no certainty there will be a happy ending. For the previous decade, the English Australian tours have ended in ashes, instead of with them. Andy Flower lost his job as head coach after an embarrassing rout, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood was sacked after another, in 2021-22. It's possible to form a pair of XIs out of English cricketers who participated in their concluding Test match at the tail end of an trip Down Under during the previous 25 years, and additionally have a several individuals over to act as substitutes for each squad.

Stokes' squad have not professed to worry excessively about consequences. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the one-day side before him, consistently states that if a aerial shot is caught on the boundary is secondary as whether it was the proper call to attempt it in the first place, and while fielding he's pleased to applaud a pitcher who concedes runs so long as they help bring the team toward taking that following breakthrough. But then the very reason Ben Stokes tried to instruct his squad to adopt this approach was so they would be in a superior situation to deliver 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 result they are bound to face. It is this bold strategy's decisive moment. And there are numerous predictions of failure in the English game for the team to escape criticism if they do endure a further poor loss in the coming weeks. The captain's strategy has been predicated on defying expectations, and the flipside is it seems that there are numerous observers who would be pleased to be shown right.

Given that, it's a appropriate time to point out that the important question goes beyond where this all ends up, but if we had fun along the way. In the recent past, England were an completely dismal national side. They had been defeated in a quartet of successive tournaments and were lagging 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 a series of 17, and lost 12 of them by large defeats. A loss by eight wickets to New Zealand at the Birmingham ground, A defeat by 157 runs to India at the the London ground, an a comprehensive loss to Australia at Melbourne, 10 wickets to the Caribbean side in the scenic location.

The English side was routed by the Windies in the venue in spring 2022 just before Root resigned as captain.

By the conclusion, after all those months of nasal swabs and social distancing and biosecure bubbles and constant defeats at the hands of everyone they played, they were just about the most miserable and careworn Test team England had ever fielded to a cricket field. A significant portion of what Stokes and McCullum have done in the following period was in response to all that, as well as the former's personal encounters during his five-month break from the game in 2021 when he had suffered a series of panic attacks. It was designed to remind everyone that it was meant to be entertaining, if it was supposed to be something.

This continues to be the case now. Despite when the Ashes is on the line, and although the team have eventually come to agree that they need to be a slightly versatile in the way they go about competing. Normal existence has a way of imposing, it can be challenging to hold on to the insights we gain in our lowest moments.

This is the England team that achieved successive run chases of significant totals in one summer against the Black Caps; that scored a massive 378 to defeat India that identical season; that became the pioneering away squad to win a clean sweep in Pakistan; that battled hard to a stalemate after going two games behind in the Ashes; that defeated the Indian team in the historic venue off the back of one of the greatest innings ever executed in the the area, and then beat Pakistan in Multan off the back of a subsequent one.

This is the national side, too, that somehow end up suffering a defeat in a Test by an innings even though the rivals made a relatively low total; who ended up losing one of the better Tests ever contested after making a bold declaration in the opening session against New Zealand, and then did the same thing against the Aussies; who were thrashed by a massive 434 runs in the venue, and who were on the wrong end of one of the Sri Lankan team's finest wins. As a unit, they have achieved some of the unlikeliest wins, experienced some of the ugliest dismissals, achieved some of the most improbable hundreds, and achieved some of the most surprising five-wicket hauls in the records of the English game.

No matter how this historic contest unfolds, they have been, in turn, incredible, preposterous, unconventional, exasperating, and totally, without regret, boldly thrilling.