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People rarely mention the final delivery of the Ashes. It's the first that's famous. That errant delivery that flies to slip, that cover drive for four, that dismissal, bowled him! Last balls? I had to look them up. Moeen Ali cutting a stroke behind to end an innings rout in a inconsequential game in 2015; Rankin being grabbed by the slip fielder off Harris, Rankin playing in his one and only Test at the tail-end of a quick disintegration in a clean sweep that's been full of them in 2014; a Steve Harmison bouncer glancing off Langer's shoulder for extras, the sole boundary the Australian team achieve in a target they'll not undertake in 2005.

It separates between wondering how things will go, and knowing how they do. One undeniable fact, there's no assurance there will be a happy ending. For the previous decade, the English visits to Australia have ended in ashes, rather than with them. Flower lost his job as manager after one humiliating defeat, in 2013-14, Silverwood was sacked after a subsequent one, in 2021-22. It's possible to form a pair of XIs out of England players who participated in their concluding Test match at the tail end of an Australian tour during the past 25 years, and even have a few players over to serve as reserves for either side.

This England team have never claimed to care too much about consequences. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the limited-overs team before him, frequently remarks that if a lofted drive is caught on the boundary is secondary as whether it was the right decision to play it in the beginning, and while fielding he's quick to praise a bowler who concedes runs so long as they bringing the team nearer to taking that next wicket. But then the very reason Ben Stokes tried to instruct his squad to play this way was so they would be in a more advantageous state to deliver the kind of cricket he thinks will do well for them in Australia.

This Ashes series, for which they have been training rigorously, already seems like the outcome they can't get away from. It is this bold strategy's critical moment. And there are numerous predictions of failure in English cricket for the team to get away with it if they do experience another poor loss in the upcoming period. His methodology has been founded on proving everyone wrong, and the other side is it feels as if there are many individuals who would be delighted to be proven correct.

Given that, it's a good moment to emphasize that the crucial matter isn't just where this all ends up, but whether or not we had fun along the way. In the recent past, the English team were an utterly abject sports team. They had been beaten in four straight contests and were lagging in the fifth, against India, when it was suspended because of Covid. They had won a single Test match out of seventeen, and lost a dozen of them by embarrassing margins. Eight wickets to the Black Caps at Edgbaston, 157 runs to the Indian squad at the the London ground, an an innings defeat to Australia at the iconic ground, A defeat by ten wickets to the Caribbean side in Grenada.

The team was soundly beaten by West Indies in Grenada in spring 2022 just before Root stepped down as captain.

By the final stage, after all those months of health protocols and isolation and controlled settings and constant defeats at the hands of everyone they played, they were just about the most miserable and careworn Test team the English cricket board had ever sent out to a playing arena. A significant portion of what Stokes and Brendon McCullum have achieved in the years since was in a consequence of all that, as well as the Stokes' personal encounters during his five-month break from the game in 2021 when he had endured a series of panic attacks. It was created to remind everyone that it was meant to be fun, if it was intended as anything at all.

It still is now. Although the the historic series is on the line, and although the team have ultimately accepted that they need to be a somewhat adaptable in the way they tackle playing the game. Everyday life has a way of intruding, it can be difficult to remember the insights we gain in our lowest moments.

This is the England team that peeled off consecutive final innings pursuits of 277, 299, and 296 in one season against the Black Caps; that scored a huge total to defeat India that identical season; that became the first touring team to win a whitewash in the host nation; that battled hard to a draw after going two games behind in the the contest; that beat India in the southern city off the back of one of the greatest innings ever performed in the the region, and then beat Pakistan in Multan off the back of a subsequent one.

Here we have the England team, too, that unexpectedly end up losing a Test by an innings defeat even though the other team made only 326; who fetched up being defeated in one of the finer contests ever played after making a confident decision in the opening session against New Zealand, and then repeated the action against Australia; who were thrashed by a huge margin in Rajkot, and who were on the unsuccessful part of one of the island nation's finest wins. Collectively, they have achieved some of the surprising successes, endured some of the ugliest dismissals, scored some of the most improbable tons, and taken some of the most remarkable five-fers in the history of the national sport.

Regardless of how this Ashes series unfolds, they have been, in turn, astonishing, preposterous, ridiculous, infuriating, and entirely, without regret, boldly thrilling.