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Few recall the concluding moment of the Ashes. It's the first that's famous. That wide that reaches the slip cordon, that beautiful stroke for four, that wicket, clean bowled! Last balls? I had to research them. Moeen Ali slicing a drive behind to finish an innings loss in a inconsequential game in 2015; Boyd Rankin being grabbed by the slip fielder off Harris, Rankin featuring in his sole Test at the conclusion of a 30-over collapse in a clean sweep that's been full of them in 2014; a Steve Harmison short ball glancing off Justin Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the only four the Australian team manage in a target they'll not undertake in 2005.

It's the difference between questioning how things will go, and understanding how they do. One undeniable fact, there's no certainty there will be a successful conclusion. For the past ten years, England's Australian tours have finished in defeat, as opposed to with them. Flower lost his job as coach after an embarrassing rout, in 2013-14, Silverwood lost his after a subsequent one, in 2021-22. It's possible to form a pair of XIs out of England players who participated in their concluding Test match at the back end of an trip Down Under during the previous 25 years, and even have a couple of men over to carry the drinks for each squad.

Stokes' squad have never claimed to care too much about consequences. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the limited-overs team before him, frequently remarks that regardless of whether a lofted drive is caught on the boundary is secondary as if it was the proper call to play it in the outset, and while fielding he's pleased to applaud a bowler who gives away boundaries so long as they help bring the team nearer to taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the primary motive Stokes tried to guide his players to adopt this approach was so they would be in a more advantageous state to deliver the kind of cricket he thinks will succeed for them in Australia.

The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been planning extensively, already feels like the conclusion they can't get away from. It is this bold strategy's decisive moment. And there are an abundance of predictions of failure in the national sport for the team to avoid backlash if they do endure a further disappointing result in the coming weeks. Stokes's approach has been predicated on proving everyone wrong, and the counterpart is it seems that there are plenty of people who would be delighted to be proven correct.

Given that, it's a good moment to point out that the important question goes beyond where this all ends up, but whether or not we had fun along the way. In the recent past, the English team were an thoroughly poor cricket team. They had been beaten in a quartet of successive tournaments and were trailing in the fifth one, against the Indian team, when it was halted because of the pandemic. They had won a single Test match out of a series of 17, and lost twelve of them by large defeats. An eight-wicket defeat to New Zealand at the historic venue, A defeat by 157 runs to the Indian squad at the Oval, an an innings defeat to the Australians at the MCG, 10 wickets to the Windies in the island nation.

The English side was routed by the Caribbean team in the island in March 2022 just before Joe Root stepped down as captain.

By the end, after all those periods of nasal swabs and isolation and restricted environments and constant defeats at the hands of each rival, they were just about the most miserable and careworn Test team the English cricket board had ever put on to a sports ground. A significant portion of what Ben Stokes and McCullum have accomplished in the following period was in reaction to all that, as well as the former's experiences during his time away from the game in 2021 when he had experienced a period of mental health challenges. It was designed to remind everyone that it was intended as entertaining, if it was meant to be something.

It still is now. Even when the Ashes is on the line, and regardless if the team have finally recognized that they need to be a somewhat adaptable in the way they approach performing. Normal existence has a way of intruding, it can be challenging to retain the insights we gain in our lowest moments.

This is the national side that secured back-to-back final innings pursuits of three challenging targets in one period against New Zealand; that achieved a huge total to defeat the Indian team that corresponding period; that became the pioneering away squad to win a comprehensive victory in the host nation; that battled hard to a draw after going 2-0 down in the the contest; that overcame the Indian team in Hyderabad off the back of one of the greatest innings ever performed in the the region, and then beat Pakistan in Multan off the back of a subsequent one.

Here we have the England team, too, that somehow end up losing a Test by an innings defeat even though the other team made a modest 326; who ended up being defeated in one of the better Tests ever contested after making a confident decision in the first innings against New Zealand, and then followed suit against the Aussies; who were thrashed by a massive 434 runs in the Indian city, and who were on the unsuccessful part of one of the island nation's most notable triumphs. Collectively, they have recorded some of the surprising successes, experienced some of the poorest performances, made some of the surprising tons, and achieved some of the most surprising five-wicket hauls in the records of the national sport.

No matter how this Ashes series unfolds, they have been, successively, amazing, unbelievable, absurd, frustrating, and entirely, without regret, unapologetically enjoyable.