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People rarely mention the final delivery of the Ashes. It's the first that's famous. That errant delivery that reaches the slip cordon, that cover drive for four, that wicket, clean bowled! Last balls? I needed to check. Ali edging a shot behind to conclude a batting effort defeat in a meaningless match in 2015; Rankin being taken at slip off Ryan Harris, Rankin playing in his one and only Test at the fag-end of a rapid downfall in a comprehensive defeat that's been plentiful in 2014; a Steve Harmison rising delivery deflecting off Justin Langer's shoulder for extras, the only four Australia achieve in a pursuit they'll not undertake in 2005.

It separates between questioning how things will go, and understanding how they do. One undeniable fact, there's no assurance there will be a positive outcome. For the past ten years, the English trips Down Under have concluded in failure, as opposed to with them. Flower was dismissed as coach after one humiliating defeat, in 2013-14, Silverwood lost his after another, in 2021-22. One could assemble a pair of XIs out of national team members who featured in their final Test match at the tail end of an trip Down Under during the previous 25 years, and additionally have a few players over to act as substitutes for each squad.

This England team have not professed to care too much about outcomes. Stokes, like Morgan with the one-day side before him, consistently states that whether or not a aerial shot is taken at the rope is secondary as if it was the correct choice to play it in the first place, and in the field he's quick to praise a pitcher who allows scoring shots so long as they help bring the team nearer to taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the primary motive Ben Stokes tried to instruct his squad to follow this style was so they would be in a more advantageous state to produce the kind of cricket he thinks will succeed for them in Australia.

The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been planning extensively, already seems like the result they are bound to face. It is Bazball's decisive moment. And there are too many warnings of defeat in English cricket for the team to escape criticism if they do suffer another bad defeat in the next few weeks. The captain's strategy has been predicated on defying expectations, and the counterpart is it seems that there are plenty of people who would be delighted to be validated.

Considering this, it's a appropriate time to point out that the key issue goes beyond where this concludes, but whether or not we found pleasure along the way. In the recent past, England were an utterly abject sports team. They had been defeated in four consecutive series and were trailing in the final one, against India, when it was halted because of the pandemic. They had won only one Test match out of seventeen, and lost a dozen of them by large defeats. Eight wickets to New Zealand at the Birmingham ground, A 157-run loss to India at the Oval, an a comprehensive loss to Australia at the MCG, A defeat by ten wickets to the Caribbean side in Grenada.

England were thrashed by the Caribbean team in the island in spring 2022 just before Joe Root stepped down as skipper.

By the conclusion, after all those stretches of health protocols and social distancing and biosecure bubbles and repeated losses at the hands of all opponents, they were practically the most disheartened and weary Test team England had ever sent out to a sports ground. A great deal of what Stokes and McCullum have achieved in the years since was in response to all that, as well as the former's personal encounters during his hiatus from the game in 2021 when he had endured a series of panic attacks. It was designed to make people recall that it was supposed to be fun, if it was meant to be something.

This continues to be the case now. Despite when the the historic series is on the line, and regardless if the team have eventually come to agree that they need to be a slightly versatile in the way they approach competing. Daily routines has a way of intruding, it can be hard to hold on to the lessons we learn in our most difficult periods.

This is the national side that secured successive run chases of 277, 299, and 296 in one season against New Zealand; that achieved a huge total to beat the subcontinent giants that same summer; that became the first touring team to win a whitewash in the subcontinent country; that fought back to a stalemate after going trailing by two matches in the Ashes; that beat the Indian team in the historic venue off the back of one of the greatest innings ever executed in the the area, and then beat Pakistan in the city off the back of a further exceptional performance.

Here we have the national side, too, that managed to end up suffering a defeat in a Test by an innings defeat even though the opposition made only 326; who ended up suffering a loss in one of the finer contests ever contested after making a confident decision in the opening session against the Black Caps, and then did the same thing against the Aussies; who were routed by a huge margin in the venue, and who were on the wrong end of one of Sri Lanka's finest wins. Collectively, they have achieved some of the unlikeliest wins, experienced some of the most embarrassing exits, scored some of the most improbable tons, and achieved some of the most startling exceptional bowling spells in the records of the English game.

Regardless of how this prestigious tournament concludes, they have been, in turn, amazing, preposterous, absurd, frustrating, and totally, unapologetically, unapologetically thrilling.