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People rarely mention the last ball of the Ashes. That initial ball that's renowned. That stray ball that goes to the slips, that beautiful stroke for four, that wicket, clean bowled! Last balls? I needed to check. Moeen Ali cutting a stroke behind to finish an innings rout in a inconsequential game in 2015; Boyd Rankin being taken at slip off Ryan Harris, Rankin participating in his one and only Test at the conclusion of a 30-over collapse in a 5-0 whitewash that's been commonplace in 2014; a Steve Harmison rising delivery ricocheting away Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the only four the Aussies score in a target they'll not attempt in 2005.

It's the difference between questioning how things will go, and seeing how they do. One certainty is, there's no guarantee there will be a positive outcome. For the last decade, the English Australian tours have finished in defeat, rather than with them. Flower lost his job as head coach after one humiliating defeat, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood lost his after a subsequent one, in 2021-22. It's possible to form a two lineups out of national team members who featured in their final Test match at the conclusion of an tour to Australia during the past 25 years, and even have a several individuals over to act as substitutes for either side.

The current English side have not professed to care too much about results. Ben Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the limited-overs team before him, always says that regardless of whether a lofted drive is caught on the boundary matters less as if it was the correct choice to attempt it in the outset, and during play he's quick to praise a pitcher who gives away boundaries so long as they help bring the team toward taking that following breakthrough. But then the primary motive Stokes tried to teach his team to play this way was so they would be in a superior situation to produce the brand of the game he thinks will do well for them in Australia.

This Ashes series, for which they have been planning extensively, already feels like the result they cannot escape. It is Bazball's make or break moment. And there are an abundance of “I told you so’s” in the English game for the team to avoid backlash if they do endure a further poor loss in the coming weeks. The captain's strategy has been based on proving everyone wrong, and the flipside is it appears there are plenty of people who would be pleased to be shown right.

Considering this, it's a suitable occasion to highlight that the crucial matter is not only where this concludes, but if we had fun along the way. Four years ago, England were an utterly abject national side. They had been defeated in four straight contests and were trailing in the fifth, against India, when it was postponed because of the virus. They had won only one Test match out of seventeen, and lost 12 of them by large defeats. Eight wickets to the Kiwis at the Birmingham ground, A 157-run loss to the subcontinent team at the Oval, an a comprehensive loss to the Australians at Melbourne, A ten-wicket loss to West Indies in the scenic location.

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

By the conclusion, after all those periods of nasal swabs and preventive measures and controlled settings and constant defeats at the hands of each rival, they were practically the most miserable and weary Test team England had ever put on to a cricket field. A great deal of what Stokes and Brendon McCullum have done in the subsequent years was in a consequence of all that, as well as the former's personal encounters during his time away from the game in 2021 when he had suffered a series of panic attacks. It was intended to make people recall that it was meant to be fun, if it was meant to be anything.

This continues to be the case now. Although the the historic series is on the line, and regardless if the team have ultimately accepted that they need to be a little more flexible in the way they approach performing. Normal existence has a way of intruding, it can be challenging to hold on to the lessons we learn in our lowest moments.

This is the England team that peeled off back-to-back run chases of significant totals in one season against New Zealand; that made a huge total to beat India that corresponding period; that became the initial visiting side to win a whitewash in the host nation; that battled hard to a stalemate after going trailing by two matches in the Ashes; that beat the Indian team in the southern city off the back of one of the greatest innings ever executed in the the region, and then beat Pakistan in Multan off the back of another.

It is the England team, too, that somehow end up being defeated in a Test by an innings defeat even though the rivals made a modest 326; who concluded suffering a loss in one of the finer contests ever played after making a cocksure declaration in the first innings against the Black Caps, and then followed suit against the Australian team; who were thrashed by a massive 434 runs in Rajkot, and who were on the losing side of one of the island nation's finest wins. As a unit, they have recorded some of the most improbable victories, experienced some of the ugliest dismissals, achieved some of the most improbable hundreds, and taken some of the most remarkable exceptional bowling spells in the history of English cricket.

No matter how this prestigious tournament concludes, they have been, in turn, incredible, preposterous, unconventional, frustrating, and entirely, unrepentantly, unashamedly entertaining.