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Nobody talks about the final delivery of the Ashes. The opening delivery that's renowned. That stray ball that reaches the slip cordon, that elegant shot for four, that wicket, bowled him! Last balls? I needed to check. Moeen Ali slicing a drive behind to finish an innings defeat in a inconsequential game in 2015; Boyd Rankin being grabbed by the slip fielder off Ryan Harris, Rankin participating in his one and only Test at the fag-end of a rapid downfall in a 5-0 whitewash that's been full of them in 2014; a Harmison short ball deflecting off Langer's shoulder for runs, the single four Australia score in a run chase they'll never get to make in 2005.

It separates between questioning how things will go, and knowing how they do. One undeniable fact, there's no assurance there will be a happy ending. For the last decade, the English visits to Australia have concluded in failure, instead of with them. Andy Flower was dismissed as head coach after one humiliating defeat, in 2013-14, Silverwood was let go after a further defeat, in 2021-22. One could assemble a pair of XIs out of England players who participated in their concluding Test match at the conclusion of an tour to Australia during the past 25 years, and still have a few players over to act as substitutes for either side.

The current English side have not professed to be overly concerned about results. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the ODI squad before him, frequently remarks that whether or not a lofted drive is caught on the boundary is secondary as if it was the proper call to execute it in the beginning, and in the field he's quick to praise a bowler who concedes runs so long as they are bringing the team closer to taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the very reason Ben Stokes tried to teach his team to follow this style was so they would be in a better position to execute the style of play he believes will succeed for them in Australia.

The forthcoming contest, for which they have been preparing for so long, already appears as the result they cannot escape. It is this aggressive approach's critical moment. And there are an abundance of predictions of failure in English cricket for the team to avoid backlash if they do suffer another disappointing result in the upcoming period. His methodology has been predicated on defying expectations, and the counterpart is it feels as if there are plenty of people who would be delighted to be validated.

Given that, it's a good moment to emphasize that the important question is not only where this ultimately leads, but regardless of whether we enjoyed it along the way. A few years back, England were an thoroughly poor sports team. They had been defeated in four consecutive series and were lagging in the fifth, against the Indian team, when it was postponed because of Covid. They had won only 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, 157 runs to the Indian squad at the Oval, an a comprehensive loss to Australia at the MCG, A ten-wicket loss to West Indies in Grenada.

The team was soundly beaten by the Caribbean team in the island in the early part of 2022 just before Root resigned as skipper.

By the end, after all those stretches of health protocols and isolation and biosecure bubbles and constant defeats at the hands of all opponents, they were just about the most miserable and careworn Test team the English cricket board had ever put on to a cricket field. A great deal of what Stokes and McCullum have achieved in the subsequent years was in a consequence of all that, as well as the former's individual trials during his time away from the game in 2021 when he had suffered a series of panic attacks. It was designed to make people recall that it was meant to be entertaining, if it was meant to be anything.

It still is now. Although 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. Normal existence has a way of crowding in, it can be hard to remember the lessons we learn in our most difficult periods.

This is the England team that achieved consecutive run chases of three challenging targets in one season against the Kiwis; that scored 378 to beat the Indian team that same summer; that became the pioneering away squad to win a clean sweep in the host nation; that fought back to a draw after going trailing by two matches in the the series; that defeated the Indian team in Hyderabad off the back of one of the finest batting displays ever played in the the area, and then defeated Pakistan in Multan off the back of a subsequent one.

This is the England team, too, that somehow end up suffering a defeat in a Test by an large margin even though the rivals made a relatively low total; who concluded suffering a loss in one of the better Tests ever contested after making a confident decision in the initial batting effort against the Black Caps, and then did the same thing against Australia; who were routed by 434 runs in the venue, and who were on the wrong end of one of the Sri Lankan team's greatest victories. Collectively, they have recorded some of the most improbable victories, experienced some of the poorest performances, scored some of the most improbable hundreds, and secured some of the most startling five-wicket hauls in the history of the English game.

Regardless of how this prestigious tournament unfolds, they have been, in turn, amazing, preposterous, absurd, frustrating, and totally, unrepentantly, unashamedly thrilling.