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Few recall the concluding moment of the Ashes. That initial ball that's renowned. That errant delivery that flies to slip, that beautiful stroke for four, that wicket, bowled him! Final deliveries? I had to look them up. Moeen Ali edging a shot behind to finish an innings rout in a dead rubber in 2015; Boyd Rankin being grabbed by the slip fielder off Ryan Harris, Rankin playing in his single Test at the fag-end of a 30-over collapse in a 5-0 whitewash that's been commonplace in 2014; a Steve Harmison rising delivery deflecting off Justin Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the sole boundary the Australian team score in a run chase they'll not attempt in 2005.

It separates between wondering how things will go, and knowing how they do. One certainty is, there's no guarantee there will be a successful conclusion. For the last decade, the English trips Down Under have ended in ashes, instead of with them. Flower lost his job as coach after one humiliating defeat, in 2013-14, Silverwood lost his after a subsequent one, in 2021-22. One could assemble a two lineups out of national team members who played their last Test match at the tail end of an tour to Australia during the last quarter-century, and still have a few players over to act as substitutes for each squad.

The current English side have never claimed to care too much about outcomes. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the ODI squad before him, consistently states that if a lofted drive is caught on the boundary is secondary as whether it was the correct choice to execute it in the outset, and while fielding he's happy to clap a pitcher who allows scoring shots so long as they are bringing the team closer to taking that next wicket. But then the primary motive Stokes tried to guide his players to play this way was so they would be in a more advantageous state to produce the kind of cricket he feels will do well for them in Australia.

This Ashes series, for which they have been training rigorously, already feels like the outcome 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 English cricket for the team to avoid backlash if they do endure a further bad defeat in the next few weeks. Stokes's approach has been based on proving everyone wrong, and the flipside is it seems that there are numerous observers who would be delighted to be proven correct.

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 had fun along the way. Four years ago, England were an utterly abject sports team. They had been beaten in four consecutive series and were trailing in the fifth one, against India, when it was postponed because of Covid. They had won exactly one Test match out of 17, and lost 12 of them by embarrassing margins. Eight wickets to New Zealand at Edgbaston, A defeat by 157 runs to India at the Oval, an innings and 14 runs to the Australians at the MCG, A defeat by ten wickets to the Windies in Grenada.

The English side was routed by the Windies in Grenada in March 2022 just before Root stepped down as captain.

By the end, after all those periods of nasal swabs and isolation and controlled settings and repeated losses at the hands of each rival, they were virtually the most disheartened and weary Test team the English cricket board had ever fielded to a playing arena. So much of what Stokes and Brendon McCullum have accomplished in the following period was in response to all that, as well as the Stokes' experiences during his five-month break from the game in 2021 when he had experienced a series of panic attacks. It was designed to emphasize to all that it was intended as enjoyable, if it was meant to be something.

That remains true now. Although the the historic series is on the line, and regardless if the team have finally recognized that they need to be a slightly versatile in the way they approach performing. Normal existence has a way of crowding in, it can be hard to hold on to the knowledge we acquire in our lowest moments.

Here is the national side that secured consecutive final innings pursuits of 277, 299, and 296 in one period against New Zealand; that scored a huge total to defeat the Indian team that same summer; that became the first touring team to win a clean sweep in the subcontinent country; that showed resilience to a tie after going 2-0 down in the the series; that beat the Indian team in Hyderabad off the back of one of the most remarkable knocks ever played in the the region, and then beat the Pakistani team in the location off the back of another.

This is the England team, too, that managed to end up losing a Test by an innings defeat even though the rivals made a relatively low total; who fetched up losing one of the better Tests ever staged after making a cocksure declaration in the first innings against New Zealand, and then followed suit against the Aussies; who were routed by a huge margin in the Indian city, and who were on the wrong end of one of the Sri Lankan team's greatest victories. Between them, they have achieved some of the most improbable victories, suffered some of the ugliest dismissals, made some of the most improbable centuries, and achieved some of the most surprising five-wicket hauls in the records of English cricket.

However this Ashes series unfolds, they have been, one after another, amazing, unbelievable, unconventional, frustrating, and entirely, unrepentantly, unashamedly entertaining.