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People rarely mention the concluding moment of the Ashes. It's the first that's legendary. That wide that goes to the slips, that elegant shot for four, that fallen stump, shattering the stumps! Concluding moments? I needed to check. Ali slicing a drive behind to finish an innings defeat in a meaningless match in 2015; Boyd Rankin being taken at slip off Ryan Harris, Boyd Rankin playing in his sole Test at the fag-end of a 30-over collapse in a comprehensive defeat that's been full of them in 2014; a Harmison rising delivery glancing off Justin Langer's shoulder for extras, the sole boundary the Australian team score in a target they'll not undertake 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 last decade, England's trips Down Under have finished in defeat, instead of with them. Andy Flower lost his job as coach after a crushing loss, in 2013-14, Silverwood lost his after a further defeat, in 2021-22. It's possible to form a couple of teams out of English cricketers who played their last Test match at the conclusion of an trip Down Under during the last quarter-century, and even have a few players over to carry the drinks for either side.

This England team have not asserted to care too much about results. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the ODI squad before him, frequently remarks that if a lofted drive is grabbed near the fence is secondary as whether or not it was the correct choice to attempt it in the beginning, and during play he's pleased to applaud a bowler who concedes runs so long as they bringing the team nearer to taking that following breakthrough. But then the very reason Stokes tried to teach his team to play this way was so they would be in a more advantageous state to produce the style of play he feels will perform effectively for them in Australia.

The forthcoming contest, for which they have been preparing for so long, already feels like the result they can't get away from. It is this bold strategy's make or break moment. And there are too many warnings of defeat in the English game for the team to get away with it if they do endure a further disappointing result in the next few weeks. His methodology has been founded on challenging skeptics, and the flipside is it appears there are plenty of people who would be pleased to be proven correct.

In light of this, it's a good moment to point out that the crucial matter goes beyond where this ultimately leads, but whether or not we had fun along the way. A few years back, the English team were an completely dismal cricket team. They had been overcome in four straight contests and were falling behind in the final one, against the Indian team, when it was suspended because of the pandemic. They had won only one Test match out of seventeen, and lost a dozen of them by humiliating deficits. An eight-wicket defeat to New Zealand at the historic venue, A 157-run loss to the Indian squad at the the London ground, an an innings defeat to Australia at Melbourne, 10 wickets to the Caribbean side in the scenic location.

The English side was routed by West Indies in the venue in March 2022 just before Root stepped aside as captain.

By the conclusion, after all those months of testing and isolation and biosecure bubbles and endless beatings at the hands of everyone they played, they were just about the most disheartened and careworn Test team the English cricket board had ever put on to a cricket field. A significant portion of what Ben Stokes and McCullum have done in the years since was in response to all that, as well as the former's experiences during his five-month break from the game in 2021 when he had suffered a series of panic attacks. It was created to remind everyone that it was meant to be entertaining, if it was intended as anything at all.

That remains true now. Despite when the Ashes is on the line, and although the team have ultimately accepted that they need to be a slightly versatile in the way they tackle performing. Everyday life has a way of imposing, it can be hard to retain the lessons we learn in our most difficult periods.

This is the national side that secured back-to-back final innings pursuits of significant totals in one period against the Kiwis; that achieved a massive 378 to overcome India that identical season; that became the pioneering away squad to win a clean sweep in the subcontinent country; that fought back to a draw after going trailing by two matches in the Ashes; that defeated India in Hyderabad off the back of one of the greatest innings ever played in the the region, and then beat the Pakistani team in Multan off the back of a further exceptional performance.

It is the national side, too, that unexpectedly end up suffering a defeat in a Test by an large margin even though the opposition made a modest 326; who ended up suffering a loss in one of the better Tests ever contested after making a confident decision in the first innings against the Black Caps, and then repeated the action against the Australian team; who were soundly beaten by 434 runs in the Indian city, and who were on the unsuccessful part of one of the island nation's greatest victories. As a unit, they have achieved some of the unlikeliest wins, suffered some of the most embarrassing exits, scored some of the surprising centuries, and achieved some of the most surprising five-fers in the records of the national sport.

Regardless of how this Ashes series shakes out, they have been, successively, incredible, outrageous, unconventional, frustrating, and entirely, without regret, unashamedly entertaining.