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Nobody talks about the last ball of the Ashes. It's the first that's famous. That errant delivery that reaches the slip cordon, that elegant shot for four, that wicket, shattering the stumps! Final deliveries? I needed to check. Ali cutting a stroke behind to finish an innings loss in a inconsequential game in 2015; Boyd Rankin being caught in the slips off Harris, Boyd Rankin participating in his single Test at the fag-end of a quick disintegration in a comprehensive defeat that's been commonplace in 2014; a Harmison bouncer ricocheting away Langer's shoulder for extras, the sole boundary Australia manage in a pursuit they'll never get to make in 2005.

It separates between speculating how things will go, and seeing how they do. One thing's certain, there's no certainty there will be a successful conclusion. For the previous decade, England's Australian tours have ended in ashes, instead of with them. Andy Flower was removed as manager after an embarrassing rout, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood lost his after a further defeat, in 2021-22. You can make a pair of XIs out of English cricketers who participated in their concluding Test match at the tail end of an Australian tour during the previous 25 years, and even have a couple of men over to serve as reserves for each squad.

The current English side have never claimed to worry excessively about consequences. Ben Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the one-day side before him, consistently states that if a lifted stroke is taken at the rope isn't as important as whether or not it was the right decision to execute it in the beginning, and in the field he's quick to praise a delivery man who gives away boundaries so long as they help bring the team closer to taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the very reason Ben Stokes tried to guide his players to play this way was so they would be in a more advantageous state to deliver the kind of cricket he feels will perform effectively for them in Australia.

The forthcoming contest, for which they have been preparing for so long, already appears as the conclusion they are bound to face. It is this bold strategy's make or break moment. And there are an abundance of warnings of defeat in the English game for the team to avoid backlash if they do endure a further poor loss in the next few weeks. The captain's strategy has been founded on challenging skeptics, and the counterpart is it appears there are numerous observers who would be thrilled to be shown right.

Considering this, it's a appropriate time to point out that the key issue is not only where this all ends up, but if we found pleasure along the way. Four years ago, the English team were an thoroughly poor national side. They had been defeated in four straight contests and were trailing in the fifth one, against India, when it was suspended because of Covid. They had won a single Test match out of seventeen, and lost twelve of them by embarrassing margins. Eight wickets to the Kiwis at the Birmingham ground, 157 runs to India at the Oval, an innings and 14 runs to Australia at Melbourne, A ten-wicket loss to the Caribbean side in the scenic location.

England were thrashed by the Caribbean team in the island in spring 2022 just before Joe Root resigned as captain.

By the conclusion, after all those stretches of nasal swabs and isolation and biosecure bubbles and endless beatings at the hands of all opponents, they were just about the most miserable and exhausted Test team the English cricket board had ever sent out to a cricket field. A significant portion of what Ben Stokes and McCullum have done in the subsequent years was in reaction to all that, as well as the former's personal encounters during his hiatus from the game in 2021 when he had experienced a bout of anxiety. It was created to emphasize to all that it was supposed to be fun, if it was meant to be anything at all.

That remains true now. Although the the prestigious contest is on the line, and regardless if the team have ultimately accepted that they need to be a slightly versatile in the way they approach performing. Everyday life has a way of imposing, it can be hard to retain the knowledge we acquire in our most difficult periods.

Here is the national side that secured consecutive final innings pursuits of three challenging targets in one period against the Black Caps; that made 378 to beat the subcontinent giants that same summer; that became the initial visiting side to win a whitewash in the subcontinent country; that showed resilience to a draw 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 most remarkable knocks ever played in the subcontinent, and then defeated Pakistan in the location off the back of a further exceptional performance.

Here we have the English squad, too, that somehow end up being defeated in a Test by an large margin even though the rivals made a modest 326; who fetched up losing one of the better Tests ever played after making a bold declaration in the opening session against the Black Caps, and then did the same thing against Australia; who were thrashed by 434 runs in the venue, and who were on the wrong end of one of the Sri Lankan team's greatest victories. Between them, they have secured some of the unlikeliest wins, experienced some of the ugliest dismissals, scored some of the unlikeliest centuries, and taken some of the most startling exceptional bowling spells in the annals of English cricket.

No matter how this Ashes series shakes out, they have been, in turn, incredible, outrageous, unconventional, infuriating, and entirely, without regret, boldly entertaining.