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People rarely mention the final delivery of the Ashes. It's the first that's legendary. That wide that reaches the slip cordon, that cover drive for four, that dismissal, clean bowled! Final deliveries? I had to look them up. Ali edging a shot behind to conclude a batting effort rout in a meaningless match in 2015; Rankin being caught in the slips off Harris, Boyd Rankin participating in his single Test at the conclusion of a quick disintegration in a clean sweep that's been commonplace in 2014; a Harmison short ball deflecting off Langer's shoulder for runs, the sole boundary the Aussies achieve in a pursuit they'll never get to make in 2005.

It's the difference between speculating how things will go, and knowing how they do. One thing's certain, there's no guarantee there will be a happy ending. For the last decade, the English visits to Australia have ended in ashes, instead of with them. Flower was dismissed as manager after one humiliating defeat, in 2013-14, Silverwood lost his after a further defeat, in 2021-22. You can make a two lineups out of English cricketers who participated in their concluding Test match at the conclusion of an tour to Australia during the previous 25 years, and still have a few players over to serve as reserves for both teams.

The current English side have not professed to care too much about results. Stokes, like Morgan with the limited-overs team before him, frequently remarks that whether or not a lofted drive is caught on the boundary matters less as if it was the proper call to execute it in the outset, and while fielding he's pleased to applaud a delivery man who concedes runs so long as they are bringing the team closer to taking that following breakthrough. But then the very reason Stokes tried to guide his players to adopt this approach was so they would be in a better position to produce the brand of the game he feels will succeed for them in Australia.

The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been preparing for so long, already feels like the result they cannot escape. It is this bold strategy's critical moment. And there are too many warnings of defeat in the English game for the team to avoid backlash if they do experience another bad defeat in the coming weeks. His methodology has been based on proving everyone wrong, and the counterpart is it seems that there are many individuals who would be delighted to be proven correct.

Given that, it's a good moment to point out that the important question goes beyond where this ultimately leads, but whether or not we enjoyed it along the way. A few years back, England were an thoroughly poor sports team. They had been overcome in four straight contests and were falling behind in the fifth, against the Indian team, 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. Eight wickets to the Black Caps at Edgbaston, A 157-run loss to the subcontinent team at the Oval, an an innings defeat to the Aussie team at the MCG, A defeat by ten wickets to West Indies in the scenic location.

The English side was routed by West Indies in the island in spring 2022 just before Root stepped aside as skipper.

By the conclusion, after all those stretches of testing and isolation and controlled settings and constant defeats at the hands of everyone they played, they were just about the most miserable and exhausted Test team the English cricket board had ever fielded to a playing arena. So much of what Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum have achieved in the following period was in a consequence of all that, as well as the former's personal encounters during his hiatus from the game in 2021 when he had endured a series of panic attacks. It was created to make people recall that it was supposed to be fun, if it was supposed to be something.

This continues to be the case now. Even when the the historic series is on the line, and regardless if the team have ultimately accepted that they need to be a somewhat adaptable in the way they approach playing the game. Everyday life has a way of imposing, it can be difficult to retain the lessons we learn in our toughest times.

This is the English squad that peeled off consecutive run chases of significant totals in one period against the Kiwis; that achieved a massive 378 to defeat India that corresponding period; that became the first touring team to win a whitewash in the subcontinent country; that showed resilience to a stalemate after going trailing by two matches in the the contest; that beat India in the southern city off the back of one of the finest batting displays ever played in the subcontinent, and then overcame the Pakistani team in the city off the back of a further exceptional performance.

This is the English squad, too, that managed to end up suffering a defeat in a Test by an innings even though the other team made a modest 326; who concluded losing one of the better Tests ever played after making a confident decision in the first innings against the Black Caps, and then did the same thing against Australia; who were routed by a massive 434 runs in the Indian city, and who were on the wrong end of one of Sri Lanka's most notable triumphs. As a unit, they have achieved some of the surprising successes, endured some of the poorest performances, made some of the surprising tons, and achieved some of the most surprising five-fers in the records of English cricket.

Regardless of how this prestigious tournament concludes, they have been, one after another, amazing, preposterous, unconventional, exasperating, and completely, unrepentantly, unashamedly entertaining.