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Nobody talks about the concluding moment of the Ashes. It's the first that's legendary. That errant delivery that flies to slip, that beautiful stroke for four, that fallen stump, clean bowled! Final deliveries? I needed to check. Moeen Ali cutting a stroke behind to end an innings defeat in a meaningless match in 2015; Rankin being caught in the slips off Ryan Harris, Boyd Rankin participating in his one and only Test at the tail-end of a rapid downfall in a clean sweep that's been full of them in 2014; a Steve Harmison rising delivery ricocheting away Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the only four the Australian team manage in a target they'll never get to make in 2005.

It separates between speculating how things will go, and knowing how they do. One certainty is, there's no certainty there will be a happy ending. For the last decade, the English visits to Australia have finished in defeat, rather than with them. Flower was removed as manager after an embarrassing rout, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood was sacked after another, in 2021-22. It's possible to form a pair of XIs out of English cricketers who featured in their final Test match at the conclusion of an trip Down Under during the past 25 years, and still have a several individuals over to carry the drinks for each squad.

Stokes' squad have never claimed to care too much about results. Ben Stokes, like Morgan with the limited-overs team before him, frequently remarks that if a aerial shot is grabbed near the fence matters less as whether or not it was the correct choice to attempt it in the outset, and while fielding he's quick to praise a bowler 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 better position to produce the style of play he thinks will perform effectively for them in Australia.

This Ashes series, for which they have been planning extensively, already appears as the result they cannot escape. It is this aggressive approach's critical moment. And there are numerous predictions of failure in the English game for the team to get away with it if they do experience another poor loss in the upcoming period. The captain's strategy has been founded on defying expectations, and the counterpart is it seems that there are many individuals who would be thrilled to be proven correct.

In light of this, it's a appropriate time to highlight that the important question isn't just where this all ends up, but whether or not we found pleasure along the way. In the recent past, the English team were an thoroughly poor national side. They had been beaten in four straight contests and were trailing in the final one, against India, when it was halted because of the pandemic. They had won a single Test match out of seventeen, and lost 12 of them by large defeats. An eight-wicket defeat to the Kiwis at the Birmingham ground, A defeat by 157 runs to the subcontinent team at the Oval, an an innings defeat to Australia at Melbourne, A ten-wicket loss to West Indies in the scenic location.

The team was soundly beaten by the Windies in the venue in the early part of 2022 just before Root resigned as leader.

By the end, after all those stretches of nasal swabs and social distancing and restricted environments and endless beatings at the hands of everyone they played, they were virtually the most disheartened and exhausted Test team the English cricket board had ever fielded to a cricket field. So much of what Stokes and Brendon McCullum have done in the following period was in a consequence of all that, as well as the Stokes' experiences during his time away from the game in 2021 when he had experienced a series of panic attacks. It was intended to emphasize to all that it was supposed to be fun, if it was meant to be anything.

That remains true now. Although the Ashes 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 playing the game. Daily routines has a way of imposing, it can be difficult to hold on to the knowledge we acquire in our toughest times.

Here is the England team that achieved successive run chases of three challenging targets in one summer against the Kiwis; that scored 378 to defeat the subcontinent giants that corresponding period; that became the first touring team to win a clean sweep in the subcontinent country; that showed resilience to a stalemate after going trailing by two matches in the the contest; that overcame India in Hyderabad off the back of one of the greatest innings ever executed in the the area, and then defeated the Pakistani team in Multan off the back of a subsequent one.

Here we have the English squad, too, that unexpectedly end up suffering a defeat in a Test by an innings even though the other team made a modest 326; who fetched up suffering a loss in one of the better Tests ever played after making a cocksure declaration in the first innings against the Kiwis, and then followed suit against the Aussies; who were soundly beaten by 434 runs in the Indian city, and who were on the unsuccessful part of one of Sri Lanka's greatest victories. Collectively, they have achieved some of the unlikeliest wins, suffered some of the poorest performances, made some of the most improbable centuries, and achieved some of the most remarkable five-fers in the annals of the English game.

Regardless of how this Ashes series concludes, they have been, in turn, incredible, outrageous, absurd, exasperating, and totally, unrepentantly, unashamedly thrilling.