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Few recall the last ball of the Ashes. The opening delivery that's famous. That wide that goes to the slips, that beautiful stroke for four, that fallen stump, shattering the stumps! Final deliveries? I needed to check. Ali cutting a stroke behind to finish an innings defeat in a dead rubber in 2015; Boyd Rankin being grabbed by the slip fielder off Harris, Rankin playing in his sole Test at the tail-end of a rapid downfall in a clean sweep that's been full of them in 2014; a Steve Harmison bouncer deflecting off Justin Langer's shoulder for runs, the only four the Aussies achieve in a target they'll not attempt in 2005.

It's the difference between wondering how things will go, and understanding how they do. One thing's certain, there's no assurance there will be a happy ending. For the previous decade, England's trips Down Under have finished in defeat, instead of with them. Flower was removed as manager after an embarrassing rout, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood was sacked after a further defeat, in 2021-22. One could assemble a couple of teams out of England players who featured in their final Test match at the conclusion of an Australian tour during the last quarter-century, and even have a several individuals over to carry the drinks for each squad.

Stokes' squad have not asserted to be overly concerned about outcomes. Stokes, like Morgan with the limited-overs team before him, consistently states that whether or not a lifted stroke is grabbed near the fence isn't as important as if it was the correct choice to execute it in the beginning, and while fielding he's quick to praise a bowler who gives away boundaries so long as they help bring the team closer to taking that next wicket. But then the primary motive Stokes tried to guide his players to play this way was so they would be in a better position to produce the kind of cricket he feels will succeed for them in Australia.

The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been planning extensively, already appears as the outcome they cannot escape. It is Bazball's decisive moment. And there are too many “I told you so’s” in the English game for the team to avoid backlash if they do endure a further poor loss in the upcoming period. The captain's strategy has been based on proving everyone wrong, and the other side is it seems that there are many individuals who would be delighted to be proven correct.

Considering this, it's a suitable occasion to emphasize that the important question isn't just where this concludes, but regardless of whether we found pleasure along the way. Four years ago, 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 fifth one, against India, when it was halted because of the virus. They had won exactly one Test match out of a series of 17, and lost a dozen of them by humiliating deficits. An eight-wicket defeat to the Black Caps at Edgbaston, 157 runs to the subcontinent team at the Oval, an a comprehensive loss to the Australians at the MCG, A ten-wicket loss to the Windies in the scenic location.

England were thrashed by West Indies in the island in spring 2022 just before Root resigned as leader.

By the conclusion, after all those stretches of health protocols and preventive measures and restricted environments and repeated losses at the hands of all opponents, they were virtually the most dejected and careworn Test team the English cricket board had ever put on to a cricket field. So much of what Stokes and McCullum have done in the subsequent years was in reaction to all that, as well as the Stokes' personal encounters during his five-month break from the game in 2021 when he had endured a bout of anxiety. It was intended to make people recall that it was supposed to be enjoyable, if it was meant to be anything.

This continues to be the case now. Although the the prestigious contest is on the line, and even if the team have ultimately accepted that they need to be a little more flexible in the way they go about playing the game. Everyday life has a way of crowding in, it can be hard to retain the knowledge we acquire in our toughest times.

Here is the England team that secured back-to-back run chases of three challenging targets in one period against the Kiwis; that scored a massive 378 to defeat the Indian team that identical season; that became the initial visiting side to win a whitewash in the host nation; that showed resilience to a tie after going two games behind in the the contest; that beat the Indian team in the southern city off the back of one of the greatest innings ever executed in the the area, and then beat Pakistan in the location off the back of a subsequent one.

It is the English squad, too, that somehow end up being defeated in a Test by an innings defeat even though the opposition made a relatively low total; who fetched up suffering a loss in one of the finer contests ever contested after making a confident decision in the initial batting effort against the Kiwis, and then repeated the action against the Australian team; who were routed by a huge margin in the venue, and who were on the unsuccessful part of one of Sri Lanka's greatest victories. Collectively, they have secured some of the unlikeliest wins, experienced some of the ugliest dismissals, made some of the most improbable centuries, and secured some of the most remarkable exceptional bowling spells in the history of the English game.

Regardless of how this Ashes series shakes out, they have been, successively, amazing, outrageous, ridiculous, exasperating, and entirely, unrepentantly, unashamedly entertaining.