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Few recall the concluding moment of the Ashes. That initial ball that's renowned. That stray ball that flies to slip, that beautiful stroke for four, that fallen stump, shattering the stumps! Last balls? I had to research them. Moeen Ali cutting a stroke behind to finish an innings loss in a inconsequential game in 2015; Rankin being taken at slip off Harris, Boyd Rankin featuring in his sole Test at the tail-end of a quick disintegration in a 5-0 whitewash that's been plentiful in 2014; a Steve Harmison bouncer glancing off Langer's shoulder for runs, the only four the Aussies achieve in a target they'll not undertake in 2005.

It's the difference between wondering how things will go, and understanding how they do. One undeniable fact, there's no guarantee there will be a positive outcome. For the previous decade, the English visits to Australia have finished in defeat, instead of with them. Flower lost his job as coach after an embarrassing rout, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood lost his after another, in 2021-22. You can make a pair of XIs out of England players who featured in their final Test match at the conclusion of an tour to Australia during the last quarter-century, and still have a several individuals over to carry the drinks for each squad.

Stokes' squad have not professed to care too much about results. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the limited-overs team before him, consistently states that whether or not a lifted stroke is taken at the rope is secondary as if it was the right decision to attempt it in the beginning, and in the field he's pleased to applaud a delivery man who allows scoring shots so long as they bringing the team closer to taking that following breakthrough. But then the primary motive Ben Stokes tried to instruct his squad to adopt this approach was so they would be in a better position to deliver the style of play he thinks will perform effectively for them in Australia.

This Ashes series, for which they have been preparing for so long, already feels like the outcome they can't get away from. It is this aggressive approach's make or break moment. And there are numerous “I told you so’s” in the national sport for the team to escape criticism if they do endure a further poor loss in the coming weeks. The captain's strategy has been based on proving everyone wrong, and the other side is it feels as if there are numerous observers who would be delighted to be proven correct.

Considering this, it's a appropriate time to emphasize that the important question isn't just where this all ends up, but if we enjoyed it along the way. In the recent past, England were an thoroughly poor sports team. They had been beaten in a quartet of successive tournaments and were lagging in the fifth, against India, when it was suspended because of the virus. They had won only one Test match out of 17, and lost 12 of them by embarrassing margins. Eight wickets to the Kiwis at Edgbaston, A defeat by 157 runs to the Indian squad at the the London ground, an a comprehensive loss to the Aussie team at the MCG, 10 wickets to West Indies in the island nation.

The team was soundly beaten by the Windies in the venue in March 2022 just before Joe Root resigned as skipper.

By the end, after all those periods of health protocols and isolation and restricted environments and repeated losses at the hands of all opponents, they were practically the most disheartened and weary Test team England had ever sent out to a cricket field. So much of what Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum have done in the subsequent years was in response 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 designed to emphasize to all that it was supposed to be fun, if it was meant to be anything at all.

This continues to be the case now. Despite when the Ashes is on the line, and regardless if the team have finally recognized that they need to be a somewhat adaptable in the way they approach playing the game. Everyday life has a way of intruding, it can be challenging to remember the lessons we learn in our lowest moments.

Here is the national side that achieved consecutive run chases of three challenging targets in one summer against New Zealand; that scored 378 to overcome the subcontinent giants that identical season; that became the initial visiting side to win a whitewash in the host nation; that fought back to a draw after going 2-0 down in the Ashes; that overcame India in the southern city off the back of one of the greatest innings ever played in the the area, and then defeated Pakistan in the location off the back of another.

It is the England team, too, that managed to end up losing a Test by an innings even though the other team made a modest 326; who fetched up being defeated in one of the more exciting matches ever played after making a bold declaration in the opening session against the Black Caps, and then repeated the action against Australia; who were thrashed by a massive 434 runs in the Indian city, and who were on the losing side of one of the island nation's most notable triumphs. As a unit, they have recorded some of the unlikeliest wins, endured some of the ugliest dismissals, achieved some of the surprising hundreds, and taken some of the most startling five-wicket hauls in the annals of English cricket.

However this prestigious tournament shakes out, they have been, one after another, amazing, outrageous, ridiculous, exasperating, and entirely, unapologetically, boldly thrilling.