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Nobody talks about the last ball of the Ashes. That initial ball that's renowned. That stray ball that goes to the slips, that elegant shot for four, that dismissal, clean bowled! Concluding moments? I needed to check. Moeen Ali cutting a stroke behind to end an innings loss in a dead rubber in 2015; Rankin being caught in the slips off Ryan Harris, Rankin participating in his one and only Test at the tail-end of a rapid downfall in a 5-0 whitewash that's been full of them in 2014; a Harmison short ball ricocheting away Justin Langer's shoulder for extras, the sole boundary the Australian team score in a target they'll not attempt in 2005.

It distinguishes between questioning how things will go, and understanding how they do. One certainty is, there's no guarantee there will be a successful conclusion. For the past ten years, England's trips Down Under have concluded in failure, instead of with them. Andy Flower was dismissed as head coach after an embarrassing rout, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood was sacked after a subsequent one, in 2021-22. One could assemble a pair of XIs out of English cricketers who featured in their final Test match at the conclusion of an tour to Australia during the previous 25 years, and even have a several individuals over to carry the drinks for each squad.

Stokes' squad have never claimed to worry excessively about consequences. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the one-day side before him, frequently remarks that if a lifted stroke is taken at the rope is secondary as whether it was the right decision to play it in the outset, and in the field he's quick to praise a pitcher who gives away boundaries so long as they bringing the team toward taking that following breakthrough. But then the key rationale Stokes tried to teach his team to adopt this approach was so they would be in a superior situation to deliver the style of play he thinks will do well for them in Australia.

The forthcoming contest, for which they have been planning extensively, already seems like the result they can't get away from. It is this bold strategy's make or break moment. And there are too many “I told you so’s” in the national sport for the team to avoid backlash if they do endure a further poor loss in the coming weeks. His methodology has been predicated on challenging skeptics, and the flipside is it seems that there are numerous observers who would be pleased to be shown right.

In light of this, it's a good moment to highlight that the key issue is not only where this ultimately leads, but if we had fun along the way. A few years back, the English team were an utterly abject national side. They had been defeated in four consecutive series and were lagging in the fifth, against the Indian team, when it was postponed because of the pandemic. They had won exactly one Test match out of seventeen, and lost a dozen of them by embarrassing margins. Eight wickets to New Zealand at Edgbaston, A 157-run loss to the subcontinent team at the Oval, an an innings defeat to the Australians at Melbourne, A defeat by ten wickets to the Caribbean side in the island nation.

The team was soundly beaten by West Indies in Grenada in March 2022 just before Joe Root stepped aside as skipper.

By the final stage, after all those periods of nasal swabs and preventive measures and biosecure bubbles and endless beatings at the hands of everyone they played, they were just about the most dejected and careworn Test team the English cricket board had ever fielded to a sports ground. A great deal of what Ben Stokes and McCullum have done in the following period was in response to all that, as well as the former's personal encounters during his time away from the game in 2021 when he had endured a bout of anxiety. It was designed to remind everyone that it was supposed to be enjoyable, if it was meant to be anything at all.

It still is now. Although the the prestigious contest is on the line, and regardless if the team have eventually come to agree that they need to be a somewhat adaptable in the way they approach competing. Everyday life has a way of crowding in, it can be hard to hold on to the insights we gain in our most difficult periods.

Here is the English squad that secured successive final innings pursuits of significant totals in one summer against New Zealand; that scored a massive 378 to defeat India that same summer; that became the pioneering away squad to win a clean sweep in the subcontinent country; that battled hard to a stalemate after going 2-0 down in the the series; that overcame the Indian team in the southern city off the back of one of the most remarkable knocks ever executed in the subcontinent, and then beat Pakistan in the city 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 innings defeat even though the opposition made a modest 326; who ended up losing one of the better Tests ever staged after making a bold declaration in the first innings against New Zealand, and then repeated the action against the Australian team; who were thrashed by 434 runs in Rajkot, and who were on the losing side of one of Sri Lanka's finest wins. Collectively, they have recorded some of the unlikeliest wins, experienced some of the ugliest dismissals, scored some of the surprising hundreds, and taken some of the most remarkable five-wicket hauls in the annals of the national sport.

No matter how this historic contest unfolds, they have been, one after another, astonishing, unbelievable, unconventional, exasperating, and totally, unrepentantly, unashamedly enjoyable.