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Nobody talks about the last ball of the Ashes. That initial ball that's renowned. That wide that reaches the slip cordon, that beautiful stroke for four, that dismissal, clean bowled! Final deliveries? I needed to check. Moeen Ali slicing a drive behind to finish an innings rout in a meaningless match in 2015; Rankin being taken at slip off Harris, Rankin featuring in his sole Test at the conclusion of a rapid downfall in a clean sweep that's been full of them in 2014; a Steve Harmison short ball deflecting off Justin Langer's shoulder for extras, the sole boundary Australia manage in a pursuit they'll not attempt in 2005.

It distinguishes between wondering how things will go, and understanding how they do. One undeniable fact, there's no certainty there will be a happy ending. For the past ten years, the English Australian tours have concluded in failure, instead of with them. Andy Flower was removed as coach after a crushing loss, in 2013-14, Silverwood was let go after another, in 2021-22. You can make a two lineups out of English cricketers who played their last Test match at the back end of an trip Down Under during the past 25 years, and even have a few players over to act as substitutes for each squad.

The current English side have never claimed to worry excessively about results. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the ODI squad before him, always says that whether or not a lifted stroke is grabbed near the fence is secondary as whether it was the correct choice to execute it in the first place, and in the field he's happy to clap a delivery man who concedes runs so long as they help bring the team nearer to taking that next wicket. But then the primary motive Ben Stokes tried to instruct his squad to adopt this approach was so they would be in a superior situation to execute the kind of cricket he feels will perform effectively for them in Australia.

The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been training rigorously, already feels like the outcome they are bound to face. It is this aggressive approach's make or break moment. And there are numerous warnings of defeat in the English game for the team to get away with it if they do suffer another bad defeat in the upcoming period. The captain's strategy has been predicated on defying expectations, and the flipside is it seems that there are many individuals who would be delighted to be validated.

Given that, it's a appropriate time to highlight that the crucial matter goes beyond where this all ends up, but if we enjoyed it along the way. In the recent past, the English team were an utterly abject 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 the pandemic. They had won a single Test match out of seventeen, and lost 12 of them by humiliating deficits. A loss by eight wickets to the Black Caps at Edgbaston, A defeat by 157 runs to the subcontinent team at the the famous stadium, an innings and 14 runs to the Australians at the MCG, A ten-wicket loss to West Indies in the scenic location.

The team was soundly beaten by the Windies in the island in the early part of 2022 just before Joe Root stepped down as captain.

By the final stage, after all those months of health protocols and preventive measures and controlled settings and repeated losses at the hands of all opponents, they were virtually the most disheartened and careworn Test team the English cricket board had ever sent out to a sports ground. So much of what Stokes and Brendon McCullum have done in the following period was in reaction to all that, as well as the former's individual trials during his hiatus from the game in 2021 when he had suffered a period of mental health challenges. It was designed to make people recall that it was meant to be enjoyable, if it was meant to be anything at all.

This continues to be the case now. Despite when the the prestigious contest is on the line, and even if the team have ultimately accepted that they need to be a somewhat adaptable in the way they approach playing the game. Normal existence has a way of imposing, it can be difficult to hold on to the lessons we learn in our lowest moments.

Presented is the national side that secured back-to-back run chases of significant totals in one summer against the Black Caps; that made 378 to defeat India that identical season; that became the initial visiting side to win a whitewash in the subcontinent country; that showed resilience to a tie after going trailing by two matches in the the contest; that defeated the Indian team in the historic venue off the back of one of the greatest innings ever executed in the the region, and then overcame Pakistan in the city off the back of another.

Here we have the English squad, too, that somehow end up losing a Test by an large margin even though the other team made a modest 326; who fetched up being defeated in one of the better Tests ever contested after making a confident decision in the initial batting effort against New Zealand, and then repeated the action against the Australian team; who were routed by a massive 434 runs in the venue, and who were on the losing side of one of the Sri Lankan team's greatest victories. Between them, they have recorded some of the most improbable victories, suffered some of the most embarrassing exits, made some of the most improbable tons, and secured some of the most remarkable exceptional bowling spells in the annals of the national sport.

No matter how this historic contest shakes out, they have been, in turn, amazing, preposterous, absurd, exasperating, and completely, unapologetically, unapologetically entertaining.