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Nobody talks about the final delivery of the Ashes. The opening delivery that's famous. That wide that goes to the slips, that beautiful stroke for four, that wicket, shattering the stumps! Final deliveries? I needed to check. Moeen Ali cutting a stroke behind to end an innings loss in a inconsequential game in 2015; Rankin being taken at slip off Harris, Rankin featuring in his single Test at the fag-end of a 30-over collapse in a 5-0 whitewash that's been full of them in 2014; a Steve Harmison short ball glancing off Langer's shoulder for runs, the single four Australia score in a run chase they'll never get to make in 2005.

It's the difference between wondering how things will go, and knowing how they do. One undeniable fact, there's no certainty there will be a positive outcome. For the past ten years, the English Australian tours have ended in ashes, instead of with them. Flower lost his job as head coach after a crushing loss, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood lost his after a further defeat, in 2021-22. It's possible to form a pair of XIs out of national team members who played their last Test match at the tail end of an trip Down Under during the previous 25 years, and still have a couple of men over to serve as reserves for both teams.

Stokes' squad have not professed to care too much about results. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the ODI squad before him, always says that whether or not a aerial shot is taken at the rope isn't as important as whether it was the right decision to attempt it in the outset, and during play he's happy to clap a delivery man who gives away boundaries so long as they bringing the team nearer to taking that following breakthrough. But then the key rationale Stokes tried to guide his players to play this way was so they would be in a more advantageous state to produce the style of play he thinks will do well for them in Australia.

The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been training rigorously, already seems like the result they can't get away from. It is Bazball's critical moment. And there are numerous warnings of defeat in English cricket for the team to avoid backlash if they do endure a further bad defeat in the coming weeks. His methodology has been based on challenging skeptics, and the other side is it feels as if there are many individuals who would be thrilled to be proven correct.

Given that, it's a suitable occasion to emphasize that the crucial matter goes beyond where this concludes, but regardless of whether we found pleasure along the way. A few years back, England were an utterly abject sports team. They had been overcome in four straight contests and were trailing in the fifth one, against India, when it was halted because of the virus. They had won only one Test match out of seventeen, and lost a dozen of them by embarrassing margins. A loss by eight wickets to the Kiwis at the Birmingham ground, A 157-run loss to the subcontinent team at the the London ground, an an innings defeat to Australia at the MCG, A ten-wicket loss to the Windies in the scenic location.

The team was soundly beaten by the Windies in Grenada in March 2022 just before Root stepped aside as skipper.

By the conclusion, after all those stretches of testing and social distancing and biosecure bubbles and endless beatings at the hands of everyone they played, they were practically the most disheartened and careworn Test team the English cricket board had ever sent out to a sports ground. A great deal of what Stokes and McCullum have done in the years since was in response to all that, as well as the Stokes' personal encounters during his time away from the game in 2021 when he had suffered a period of mental health challenges. It was designed to remind everyone that it was supposed to be fun, if it was intended as anything.

That remains true now. Despite when the the historic series is on the line, and although the team have eventually come to agree that they need to be a slightly versatile in the way they go about playing the game. Everyday life has a way of intruding, it can be difficult to remember the lessons we learn in our toughest times.

Presented is the national side that achieved successive final innings pursuits of 277, 299, and 296 in one season against New Zealand; that made a massive 378 to beat the Indian team that identical season; that became the pioneering away squad to win a comprehensive victory in the host nation; that battled hard to a draw after going two games behind in the the series; that defeated India in Hyderabad off the back of one of the greatest innings ever executed in the subcontinent, and then beat the Pakistani team in Multan off the back of a further exceptional performance.

It is the England team, too, that managed to end up suffering a defeat in a Test by an innings even though the rivals made only 326; who fetched up suffering a loss in one of the finer contests ever contested after making a bold declaration in the opening session against the Kiwis, and then repeated the action against the Australian team; who were thrashed by a huge margin in the Indian city, and who were on the unsuccessful part of one of the Sri Lankan team's greatest victories. As a unit, they have secured some of the surprising successes, endured some of the ugliest dismissals, scored some of the surprising centuries, and taken some of the most surprising five-fers in the records of the national sport.

However this prestigious tournament unfolds, they have been, in turn, amazing, outrageous, unconventional, frustrating, and entirely, without regret, unashamedly enjoyable.