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Few recall the concluding moment of the Ashes. The opening delivery that's renowned. That errant delivery that flies to slip, that elegant shot for four, that fallen stump, clean bowled! Last balls? I had to research them. Moeen Ali slicing a drive behind to end an innings rout in a meaningless match in 2015; Boyd Rankin being taken at slip off Ryan Harris, Rankin participating in his single Test at the fag-end of a quick disintegration in a 5-0 whitewash that's been full of them in 2014; a Harmison rising delivery deflecting off Justin Langer's shoulder for extras, the sole boundary Australia achieve in a target they'll never get to make in 2005.

It's the difference between questioning how things will go, and knowing how they do. One thing's certain, there's no certainty there will be a happy ending. For the previous decade, England's trips Down Under have concluded in failure, instead of with them. Flower was removed as coach after a crushing loss, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood lost his after a further defeat, 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 back end of an trip Down Under during the last quarter-century, and additionally have a several individuals over to serve as reserves for either side.

Stokes' squad have never claimed to be overly concerned about outcomes. Ben Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the limited-overs team before him, consistently states that regardless of whether a lofted drive is taken at the rope matters less as whether or not it was the right decision to play it in the first place, and while fielding he's pleased to applaud a bowler who gives away boundaries so long as they bringing the team nearer to taking that following breakthrough. But then the key rationale Ben Stokes tried to teach his team to play this way was so they would be in a better position to execute the brand of the game he feels will do well for them in Australia.

The forthcoming contest, for which they have been preparing for so long, already feels like the outcome they can't get away from. It is this bold strategy's make or break moment. And there are an abundance of predictions of failure in the English game for the team to get away with it if they do experience another bad defeat in the coming weeks. His methodology has been based on proving everyone wrong, and the flipside is it feels as if there are many individuals who would be pleased to be validated.

Considering this, it's a suitable occasion to emphasize that the key issue is not only where this ultimately leads, but if we had fun along the way. A few years back, the English team were an completely dismal sports team. They had been overcome in a quartet of successive tournaments and were falling behind in the final one, against India, when it was postponed because of Covid. They had won a single Test match out of seventeen, and lost twelve of them by large defeats. An eight-wicket defeat to the Black Caps at the historic venue, 157 runs to India at the the famous stadium, an an innings defeat to the Aussie team at the iconic ground, 10 wickets to West Indies in the scenic location.

England were thrashed by the Caribbean team in the island in spring 2022 just before Joe Root stepped aside as leader.

By the conclusion, after all those stretches of testing and social distancing and biosecure bubbles and constant defeats at the hands of all opponents, they were virtually the most dejected and exhausted Test team the English cricket board had ever sent out to a cricket field. A significant portion of what Stokes and McCullum have done in the subsequent years was in reaction to all that, as well as the former's personal encounters during his time away from the game in 2021 when he had suffered a bout of anxiety. It was intended to make people recall that it was supposed to be fun, if it was intended as anything.

It still is now. Even when the Ashes 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. Daily routines has a way of intruding, it can be hard to hold on to the lessons we learn in our lowest moments.

This is the England team that peeled off consecutive fourth-innings chases of 277, 299, and 296 in one summer against the Black Caps; that scored a huge total to defeat India that corresponding period; that became the first touring team to win a clean sweep in the host nation; that fought back to a tie after going 2-0 down in the the contest; that defeated the Indian team in Hyderabad off the back of one of the finest batting displays ever played in the the region, and then defeated the Pakistani team in the city off the back of another.

This is the national side, too, that managed to end up losing a Test by an innings even though the other team made a relatively low total; who fetched up suffering a loss in one of the better Tests ever contested after making a cocksure declaration in the initial batting effort against New Zealand, and then repeated the action against the Aussies; who were thrashed by a massive 434 runs in the venue, and who were on the losing side of one of the Sri Lankan team's finest wins. Between them, they have secured some of the surprising successes, experienced some of the ugliest dismissals, scored some of the most improbable hundreds, and taken some of the most remarkable exceptional bowling spells in the records of English cricket.

No matter how this historic contest concludes, they have been, successively, astonishing, preposterous, unconventional, exasperating, and entirely, without regret, unashamedly enjoyable.