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People rarely mention the final delivery of the Ashes. It's the first that's legendary. That wide that goes to the slips, that elegant shot for four, that fallen stump, shattering the stumps! Final deliveries? I had to look them up. Ali edging a shot behind to finish an innings defeat in a meaningless match in 2015; Boyd Rankin being grabbed by the slip fielder off Harris, Boyd Rankin participating in his one and only Test at the tail-end of a rapid downfall in a 5-0 whitewash that's been plentiful in 2014; a Harmison bouncer ricocheting away Justin Langer's shoulder for runs, the single four the Australian team score in a target 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 past ten years, England's trips Down Under have concluded in failure, instead of with them. Andy Flower was removed as manager after an embarrassing rout, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood was let go after another, in 2021-22. You can make a couple of teams out of English cricketers who played their last Test match at the conclusion of an tour to Australia during the past 25 years, and additionally have a several individuals over to serve as reserves for each squad.

This England team have not professed to care too much about consequences. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the ODI squad before him, always says that regardless of whether a lofted drive is taken at the rope isn't as important as whether or not it was the proper call to play it in the outset, and while fielding he's pleased to applaud a pitcher who gives away boundaries so long as they bringing the team closer to taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the primary motive Stokes tried to teach his team to play this way was so they would be in a more advantageous state to execute the kind of cricket he believes will succeed for them in Australia.

This Ashes series, for which they have been preparing for so long, already feels like the conclusion they cannot escape. It is this bold strategy's make or break moment. And there are an abundance of predictions of failure in English cricket for the team to escape criticism if they do experience another bad defeat in the next few weeks. The captain's strategy has been founded on proving everyone wrong, and the counterpart is it seems that there are many individuals who would be thrilled to be validated.

Given that, it's a good moment to highlight that the important question isn't just where this ultimately leads, but regardless of whether we had fun along the way. A few years back, England were an completely dismal cricket team. They had been defeated in four consecutive series and were lagging in the fifth, against India, when it was suspended because of the pandemic. They had won exactly one Test match out of 17, and lost 12 of them by embarrassing margins. An eight-wicket defeat to the Kiwis at the historic venue, 157 runs to the subcontinent team at the the London ground, an a comprehensive loss to the Australians at the MCG, A defeat by ten wickets to the Caribbean side in Grenada.

The English side was routed by the Caribbean team in the island in the early part of 2022 just before Joe Root resigned as skipper.

By the end, after all those periods of nasal swabs and isolation and biosecure bubbles and repeated losses at the hands of each rival, they were practically the most dejected and exhausted Test team England had ever fielded to a sports ground. A great deal of what Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum have achieved in the following period was in reaction to all that, as well as the Stokes' personal encounters during his hiatus from the game in 2021 when he had suffered a period of mental health challenges. It was designed to remind everyone that it was intended as enjoyable, if it was intended as something.

This continues to be the case now. Even when the the prestigious contest is on the line, and although the team have ultimately accepted that they need to be a little more flexible in the way they go about performing. Daily routines has a way of crowding in, it can be hard to remember the lessons we learn in our toughest times.

Here is the national side that secured back-to-back final innings pursuits of significant totals in one period against the Black Caps; that scored a massive 378 to defeat the subcontinent giants that corresponding period; that became the first touring team to win a clean sweep in Pakistan; 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 played in the the area, and then beat the Pakistani team in the location off the back of another.

It is the English squad, too, that managed to end up losing a Test by an innings even though the opposition made a relatively low total; who concluded losing one of the better Tests ever played after making a bold declaration in the first innings against the Black Caps, and then did the same thing against the Aussies; who were soundly beaten by a massive 434 runs in Rajkot, and who were on the wrong end of one of the Sri Lankan team's greatest victories. Collectively, they have achieved some of the surprising successes, experienced some of the most embarrassing exits, made some of the unlikeliest hundreds, and achieved some of the most surprising five-wicket hauls in the history of English cricket.

Regardless of how this historic contest shakes out, they have been, in turn, incredible, outrageous, ridiculous, exasperating, and totally, unrepentantly, unapologetically entertaining.