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Few recall the concluding moment of the Ashes. That initial ball that's legendary. That wide that flies to slip, that elegant shot for four, that wicket, bowled him! Final deliveries? I needed to check. Ali edging a shot behind to end an innings rout in a meaningless match in 2015; Rankin being grabbed by the slip fielder off Ryan Harris, Boyd Rankin participating in his single Test at the conclusion of a rapid downfall in a clean sweep that's been commonplace in 2014; a Steve Harmison bouncer deflecting off Justin Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the single four the Aussies achieve in a run chase they'll never get to make in 2005.

It distinguishes between speculating how things will go, and knowing how they do. One certainty is, there's no assurance there will be a positive outcome. For the previous decade, the English visits to Australia have concluded in failure, rather than with them. Andy Flower was removed as head coach after a crushing loss, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood was sacked after a further defeat, in 2021-22. You can make a couple of teams out of English cricketers who featured in their final Test match at the conclusion of an Australian tour during the last quarter-century, and even have a couple of men over to serve as reserves for either side.

The current English side have never claimed to be overly concerned about outcomes. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the limited-overs team before him, frequently remarks that if a lifted stroke is grabbed near the fence isn't as important as whether it was the right decision to execute it in the first place, and in the field he's quick to praise a delivery man who allows scoring shots so long as they are bringing the team toward taking that next wicket. But then the primary motive Stokes tried to teach his team to adopt this approach was so they would be in a superior situation to execute the brand of the game he feels will do well for them in Australia.

This Ashes series, for which they have been preparing for so long, already seems like the outcome they cannot escape. It is this aggressive approach's critical moment. And there are too many predictions of failure in the national sport for the team to avoid backlash if they do endure a further bad defeat in the next few weeks. His methodology has been based on defying expectations, and the flipside is it feels as if there are plenty of people who would be delighted to be shown right.

In light of this, it's a suitable occasion to highlight that the key issue isn't just where this ultimately leads, but whether or not we found pleasure along the way. Four years ago, the English team were an utterly abject national side. They had been beaten in a quartet of successive tournaments and were trailing in the final one, against the Indian team, when it was halted because of the pandemic. They had won a single Test match out of seventeen, and lost 12 of them by humiliating deficits. Eight wickets to the Kiwis at the historic venue, A 157-run loss to the subcontinent team at the the London ground, an an innings defeat to the Aussie team at the MCG, A ten-wicket loss to the Windies in the island nation.

The English side was routed by the Windies in the island in March 2022 just before Joe Root stepped down as leader.

By the conclusion, after all those stretches of health protocols and isolation and controlled settings and constant defeats at the hands of everyone they played, they were practically the most dejected and careworn Test team the English cricket board had ever put on to a sports ground. So much of what Stokes and Brendon McCullum have achieved in the years since was in reaction to all that, as well as the former's personal encounters during his hiatus from the game in 2021 when he had suffered a period of mental health challenges. It was created to emphasize to all that it was intended as fun, if it was intended as anything.

It still is now. Despite when the the historic series is on the line, and regardless if the team have eventually come to agree that they need to be a little more flexible in the way they tackle playing the game. Daily routines has a way of intruding, it can be hard to retain the insights we gain in our lowest moments.

This is the England team that peeled off successive fourth-innings chases of significant totals in one period against the Kiwis; that achieved 378 to beat the Indian team that corresponding period; that became the pioneering away squad to win a comprehensive victory in the host nation; that battled hard to a draw after going two games behind in the the series; that overcame the Indian team in Hyderabad off the back of one of the finest batting displays ever executed in the the region, and then overcame Pakistan in the city off the back of a further exceptional performance.

Here we have the national side, too, that unexpectedly end up being defeated in a Test by an innings even though the other team made a modest 326; who ended up being defeated in one of the more exciting matches ever contested after making a confident decision in the first innings against the Black Caps, and then followed suit against the Australian team; who were routed by a huge margin in the Indian city, and who were on the wrong end of one of the Sri Lankan team's most notable triumphs. Collectively, they have recorded some of the unlikeliest wins, suffered some of the poorest performances, made some of the most improbable hundreds, and taken some of the most remarkable exceptional bowling spells in the records of English cricket.

However this Ashes series shakes out, they have been, one after another, astonishing, preposterous, absurd, infuriating, and entirely, without regret, boldly enjoyable.