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People rarely mention the last ball of the Ashes. The opening delivery that's renowned. That wide that goes to the slips, that beautiful stroke for four, that fallen stump, bowled him! Last balls? I needed to check. Moeen Ali slicing a drive behind to end an innings loss in a meaningless match in 2015; Boyd Rankin being grabbed by the slip fielder off Ryan Harris, Boyd Rankin playing in his single Test at the tail-end of a quick disintegration in a comprehensive defeat that's been full of them in 2014; a Steve Harmison bouncer ricocheting away Langer's shoulder for runs, the sole boundary the Australian team achieve in a run chase they'll never get to make in 2005.

It's the difference between wondering how things will go, and knowing how they do. One thing's certain, there's no assurance there will be a happy ending. For the last decade, England's Australian tours have finished in defeat, rather than with them. Andy Flower was dismissed as coach 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 national team members who participated in their concluding Test match at the back end of an Australian tour during the last quarter-century, and even have a several individuals over to carry the drinks for either side.

The current English side have never claimed to care too much about consequences. Ben Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the one-day side before him, always says that whether or not a lifted stroke is caught on the boundary matters less as if it was the correct choice to play it in the outset, and in the field he's pleased to applaud a delivery man who concedes runs so long as they bringing the team toward taking that next wicket. But then the primary motive Stokes tried to teach his team to follow this style was so they would be in a better position to execute the style of play he thinks will do well for them in Australia.

The forthcoming contest, for which they have been planning extensively, already appears as the conclusion they cannot escape. It is this bold strategy's decisive moment. And there are an abundance of warnings of defeat in the national sport for the team to get away with it if they do experience another bad defeat in the upcoming period. His methodology has been founded on proving everyone wrong, and the flipside is it seems that there are plenty of people who would be thrilled to be validated.

In light of this, it's a suitable occasion to emphasize that the important question isn't just where this concludes, but if we had fun along the way. A few years back, the English team were an utterly abject sports team. They had been defeated in four straight contests and were falling behind in the final one, against India, when it was suspended because of the pandemic. They had won only one Test match out of seventeen, and lost twelve of them by embarrassing margins. Eight wickets to the Kiwis at the Birmingham ground, A 157-run loss to the subcontinent team at the the famous stadium, an an innings defeat to the Aussie team at the MCG, A ten-wicket loss to West Indies in Grenada.

The team was soundly beaten by West Indies in Grenada in spring 2022 just before Root resigned as skipper.

By the end, after all those stretches of health protocols and social distancing and biosecure bubbles and endless beatings at the hands of all opponents, they were just about the most miserable and exhausted Test team England had ever fielded to a cricket field. So much of what Ben Stokes and 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 endured a period of mental health challenges. It was intended to emphasize to all that it was intended as enjoyable, if it was meant to be anything at all.

It still is now. Despite when the Ashes is on the line, and regardless if the team have eventually come to agree that they need to be a little more flexible in the way they approach playing the game. Normal existence has a way of intruding, it can be challenging to hold on to the insights we gain in our lowest moments.

This is the England team that achieved successive run chases of significant totals in one season against the Kiwis; that made a massive 378 to beat the Indian team that identical season; that became the initial visiting side to win a whitewash in the host nation; that showed resilience to a stalemate after going 2-0 down in the the contest; that defeated India in Hyderabad off the back of one of the greatest innings ever performed in the the region, and then beat Pakistan in the location off the back of a subsequent one.

Here we have the English squad, too, that somehow end up suffering a defeat in a Test by an innings even though the other team made a modest 326; who concluded suffering a loss in one of the better Tests ever staged after making a bold declaration in the first innings against the Kiwis, and then repeated the action against the Australian team; who were thrashed by 434 runs in the venue, and who were on the wrong end of one of Sri Lanka's greatest victories. Between them, they have achieved some of the unlikeliest wins, suffered some of the most embarrassing exits, scored some of the most improbable hundreds, and taken some of the most startling five-fers in the history of the national sport.

However this historic contest shakes out, they have been, successively, amazing, outrageous, ridiculous, exasperating, and completely, unrepentantly, unapologetically thrilling.