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Nobody talks about the last ball of the Ashes. It's the first that's legendary. That errant delivery that goes to the slips, that elegant shot for four, that wicket, clean bowled! Concluding moments? I needed to check. Ali cutting a stroke behind to finish an innings rout in a dead rubber in 2015; Rankin being caught in the slips off Harris, Rankin featuring in his single Test at the tail-end of a quick disintegration in a 5-0 whitewash that's been commonplace in 2014; a Harmison rising delivery deflecting off Justin Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the sole boundary Australia score in a pursuit they'll never get to make in 2005.

It's the difference between wondering how things will go, and knowing how they do. One certainty is, there's no assurance there will be a happy ending. For the past ten years, the English Australian tours have ended in ashes, instead of with them. Andy Flower was dismissed as manager after a crushing loss, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood lost his after a subsequent one, in 2021-22. You can make a couple of teams 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 few players over to carry the drinks for either side.

Stokes' squad have not asserted to be overly concerned about outcomes. Ben Stokes, like Morgan with the ODI squad before him, frequently remarks that whether or not a aerial shot is caught on the boundary is secondary as whether or not it was the proper call to execute it in the outset, and during play he's quick to praise a bowler who gives away boundaries so long as they are bringing the team toward 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 superior situation to deliver the style of play he thinks will do well for them in Australia.

This Ashes series, for which they have been preparing for so long, already feels like the outcome they are bound to face. It is this bold strategy's critical moment. And there are an abundance of “I told you so’s” in the English game for the team to get away with it if they do suffer another disappointing result in the upcoming period. His methodology has been founded on proving everyone wrong, and the flipside is it appears there are numerous observers who would be thrilled to be shown right.

In light of this, it's a suitable occasion to highlight that the crucial matter isn't just where this concludes, but regardless of whether we had fun along the way. In the recent past, the English team were an thoroughly poor national side. They had been defeated in a quartet of successive tournaments and were lagging in the final one, against the Indian team, when it was suspended because of the pandemic. They had won exactly one Test match out of a series of 17, and lost 12 of them by embarrassing margins. An eight-wicket defeat to the Black Caps at the Birmingham ground, A 157-run loss to India at the Oval, an an innings defeat to the Aussie team at Melbourne, A ten-wicket loss to West Indies in the scenic location.

The English side was routed by the Windies in Grenada in spring 2022 just before Joe Root stepped aside as captain.

By the conclusion, after all those stretches of health protocols and preventive measures and controlled settings and repeated losses at the hands of each rival, they were practically the most disheartened and careworn Test team England had ever put on to a cricket field. So much of what Stokes and Brendon McCullum have achieved in the subsequent years was in reaction to all that, as well as the Stokes' personal encounters during his time away from the game in 2021 when he had endured a series of panic attacks. It was designed to remind everyone that it was intended as entertaining, if it was meant to be anything at all.

It still is now. Despite when the the historic series is on the line, and even if the team have finally recognized that they need to be a little more flexible in the way they approach playing the game. Daily routines has a way of crowding in, it can be challenging to hold on to the knowledge we acquire in our toughest times.

This is the England team that achieved consecutive run chases of 277, 299, and 296 in one season against the Black Caps; that achieved a huge total to defeat India that corresponding period; that became the initial visiting side to win a clean sweep in Pakistan; that fought back to a tie after going trailing by two matches in the the series; that overcame the Indian team 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.

Here we have the national side, too, that managed to end up being defeated in a Test by an large margin even though the other team made only 326; who concluded losing one of the more exciting matches ever contested after making a bold declaration in the initial batting effort against the Kiwis, and then did the same thing against the Aussies; who were thrashed by 434 runs in the Indian city, and who were on the losing side of one of Sri Lanka's most notable triumphs. Collectively, they have secured some of the most improbable victories, endured some of the most embarrassing exits, made some of the most improbable centuries, and secured some of the most remarkable five-wicket hauls in the history of English cricket.

No matter how this prestigious tournament unfolds, they have been, successively, incredible, outrageous, unconventional, exasperating, and entirely, unapologetically, unapologetically entertaining.