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Nobody talks about the last ball of the Ashes. That initial ball that's legendary. That wide that reaches the slip cordon, that cover drive for four, that wicket, clean bowled! Concluding moments? I had to look them up. Moeen Ali edging a shot behind to end an innings rout in a dead rubber in 2015; Boyd Rankin being caught in the slips off Harris, Rankin featuring in his sole Test at the tail-end of a 30-over collapse in a 5-0 whitewash that's been plentiful in 2014; a Steve Harmison bouncer glancing off Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the sole boundary the Aussies manage in a pursuit they'll never get to make in 2005.

It's the difference between speculating how things will go, and understanding how they do. One undeniable fact, there's no certainty there will be a positive outcome. For the last decade, the English Australian tours have concluded in failure, instead of with them. Andy Flower lost his job as manager after a crushing loss, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood was sacked after another, in 2021-22. It's possible to form a pair of XIs out of national team members who played their last Test match at the back end of an tour to Australia during the previous 25 years, and additionally have a couple of men over to carry the drinks for either side.

The current English side have not asserted to be overly concerned about results. Ben Stokes, like Morgan with the one-day side before him, frequently remarks that if a lofted drive is caught on the boundary isn't as important as if it was the proper call to play it in the outset, and during play he's pleased to applaud a delivery man who gives away boundaries so long as they help bring the team toward taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the primary motive Ben Stokes tried to instruct his squad to play this way was so they would be in a more advantageous state to produce the kind of cricket he feels will do well for them in Australia.

The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been training rigorously, already appears as the result they can't get away from. It is this aggressive approach's decisive moment. And there are numerous warnings of defeat in the national sport for the team to avoid backlash if they do experience another bad defeat in the coming weeks. The captain's strategy has been based on challenging skeptics, and the counterpart is it appears there are many individuals who would be delighted to be proven correct.

Considering this, it's a good moment to highlight that the crucial matter isn't just where this concludes, but if we found pleasure along the way. In the recent past, England were an completely dismal cricket team. They had been beaten in a quartet of successive tournaments and were trailing in the final one, against India, when it was halted because of the pandemic. They had won a single Test match out of a series of 17, and lost twelve of them by large defeats. An eight-wicket defeat to the Black Caps at the Birmingham ground, A 157-run loss to India at the Oval, an a comprehensive loss to Australia at the MCG, 10 wickets to the Caribbean side in Grenada.

The team was soundly beaten by the Caribbean team in Grenada in spring 2022 just before Joe Root stepped down as skipper.

By the final stage, after all those months of nasal swabs and social distancing and biosecure bubbles and endless beatings at the hands of each rival, they were practically the most miserable and careworn Test team the English cricket board had ever sent out to a sports ground. So much of what Stokes and McCullum have done in the subsequent years was in response to all that, as well as the Stokes' individual trials during his time away from the game in 2021 when he had suffered a bout of anxiety. It was designed to make people recall that it was intended as entertaining, if it was meant to be anything.

It still is now. Even when the Ashes is on the line, and although the team have eventually come to agree that they need to be a slightly versatile in the way they go about competing. Everyday life has a way of imposing, it can be challenging to hold on to the insights we gain in our most difficult periods.

Presented is the England team that peeled off successive run chases of three challenging targets in one season against the Kiwis; that scored 378 to overcome India that corresponding period; that became the first touring team to win a clean sweep in the subcontinent country; that fought back to a tie after going two games behind in the the series; that overcame India in the southern city off the back of one of the finest batting displays ever performed in the the area, and then defeated the Pakistani team in the city off the back of a further exceptional performance.

It is the England team, too, that managed to end up losing a Test by an large margin even though the rivals made only 326; who ended up being defeated in one of the finer contests ever contested after making a bold declaration in the opening session against the Black Caps, and then followed suit against Australia; who were thrashed by 434 runs in Rajkot, 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 most improbable victories, suffered some of the ugliest dismissals, achieved some of the surprising hundreds, and achieved some of the most startling five-fers in the records of the national sport.

No matter how this Ashes series shakes out, they have been, successively, incredible, unbelievable, unconventional, exasperating, and entirely, unapologetically, boldly enjoyable.