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People rarely mention the final delivery of the Ashes. That initial ball that's legendary. That stray ball that goes to the slips, that cover drive for four, that fallen stump, shattering the stumps! Final deliveries? I had to research them. Ali cutting a stroke behind to end an innings defeat in a dead rubber in 2015; Boyd Rankin being grabbed by the slip fielder off Harris, Boyd Rankin participating in his one and only Test at the tail-end of a rapid downfall in a 5-0 whitewash that's been commonplace in 2014; a Harmison bouncer ricocheting away Langer's shoulder for runs, the sole boundary the Aussies manage in a run chase they'll not undertake in 2005.

It distinguishes between speculating how things will go, and seeing how they do. One thing's certain, there's no guarantee there will be a happy ending. For the last decade, the English trips Down Under have finished in defeat, 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. You can make a couple of teams out of national team members who played their last Test match at the tail end of an Australian tour during the previous 25 years, and even have a several individuals over to act as substitutes for either side.

The current English side have not professed to be overly concerned about outcomes. Ben Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the ODI squad before him, always says that if a lifted stroke is caught on the boundary is secondary as whether it was the correct choice to execute it in the outset, and in the field he's quick to praise a pitcher who gives away boundaries so long as they bringing the team closer to taking that next wicket. But then the key rationale Stokes tried to instruct his squad to follow this style was so they would be in a better position to execute the brand of the game he thinks will do well for them in Australia.

This Ashes series, for which they have been training rigorously, already appears as the outcome they cannot escape. It is this aggressive approach's make or break moment. And there are numerous “I told you so’s” in English cricket for the team to escape criticism if they do suffer another poor loss in the next few weeks. His methodology has been predicated on proving everyone wrong, and the other side is it seems that there are numerous observers who would be thrilled to be shown right.

In light of this, it's a appropriate time to point out that the crucial matter is not only where this ultimately leads, but if we had fun along the way. Four years ago, England were an utterly abject cricket team. They had been defeated in four straight contests and were falling behind in the final one, against India, when it was suspended because of Covid. They had won a single Test match out of a series of 17, and lost twelve of them by humiliating deficits. Eight wickets to the Kiwis at Edgbaston, A 157-run loss to India at the the London ground, an a comprehensive loss to the Aussie team at the iconic ground, 10 wickets to West Indies in the island nation.

The team was soundly beaten by the Windies in the venue in the early part of 2022 just before Joe Root stepped aside as leader.

By the final stage, after all those months of testing and preventive measures and biosecure bubbles and constant defeats at the hands of everyone they played, they were virtually the most miserable and careworn Test team the English cricket board had ever fielded to a cricket field. A significant portion of what Stokes and McCullum have achieved in the following period was in reaction to all that, as well as the Stokes' personal encounters during his hiatus from the game in 2021 when he had experienced a series of panic attacks. It was created to make people recall that it was meant to be enjoyable, if it was meant to be something.

It still is now. Despite when the the prestigious contest is on the line, and although the team have finally recognized that they need to be a slightly versatile in the way they tackle competing. Normal existence has a way of intruding, it can be challenging to hold on to the knowledge we acquire in our toughest times.

Here is the England team that secured successive run chases of three challenging targets in one summer against the Kiwis; that achieved a massive 378 to beat India that same summer; that became the pioneering away squad to win a comprehensive victory in the host nation; that showed resilience to a stalemate after going two games behind in the the series; that beat India in Hyderabad off the back of one of the finest batting displays ever executed in the the region, and then beat the Pakistani team in the city off the back of a further exceptional performance.

This is the England team, too, that managed to end up losing a Test by an innings even though the rivals made a modest 326; who fetched up suffering a loss in one of the more exciting matches ever played after making a cocksure declaration in the initial batting effort against the Kiwis, and then repeated the action against Australia; who were thrashed by 434 runs in the Indian city, and who were on the losing side of one of the island nation's greatest victories. Collectively, they have recorded some of the surprising successes, suffered some of the poorest performances, made some of the surprising centuries, and taken some of the most startling exceptional bowling spells in the annals of the English game.

However this Ashes series shakes out, they have been, in turn, incredible, preposterous, ridiculous, exasperating, and totally, without regret, boldly entertaining.