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Few recall the concluding moment of the Ashes. It's the first that's renowned. That stray ball that goes to the slips, that cover drive for four, that fallen stump, clean bowled! Final deliveries? I needed to check. Ali edging a shot behind to finish an innings loss in a meaningless match in 2015; Boyd Rankin being grabbed by the slip fielder off Harris, Boyd Rankin featuring in his single Test at the fag-end of a rapid downfall in a clean sweep that's been plentiful in 2014; a Harmison rising delivery ricocheting away Langer's shoulder for extras, the sole boundary Australia achieve in a pursuit they'll not undertake in 2005.

It distinguishes between questioning how things will go, and understanding how they do. One thing's certain, there's no guarantee there will be a happy ending. For the previous decade, England's trips Down Under have ended in ashes, as opposed to with them. Flower lost his job as head coach after a crushing loss, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood was let go after a subsequent one, in 2021-22. You can make a couple of teams out of England players who featured in their final Test match at the tail end of an trip Down Under during the last quarter-century, and additionally have a few players over to carry the drinks for either side.

This England team have not professed to worry excessively about results. Ben Stokes, like Morgan with the limited-overs team before him, consistently states that regardless of whether a lofted drive is caught on the boundary matters less as whether or not it was the proper call to attempt it in the beginning, and while fielding he's pleased to applaud a pitcher who concedes runs so long as they bringing the team nearer to taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the primary motive Ben Stokes tried to teach his team to play this way was so they would be in a better position to produce the kind of cricket he thinks will succeed for them in Australia.

This Ashes series, for which they have been preparing for so long, already seems like the conclusion they are bound to face. It is this aggressive approach's critical moment. And there are numerous “I told you so’s” in English cricket for the team to escape criticism if they do experience another disappointing result in the coming weeks. Stokes's approach has been founded on defying expectations, and the flipside is it seems that there are plenty of people who would be thrilled to be validated.

Given that, it's a good moment to point out that the important question goes beyond where this ultimately leads, but whether or not we found pleasure along the way. In the recent past, the English team were an utterly abject national side. They had been beaten in a quartet of successive tournaments and were trailing in the fifth one, against India, when it was postponed because of the virus. They had won only one Test match out of seventeen, and lost twelve of them by humiliating deficits. An eight-wicket defeat to the Kiwis at the Birmingham ground, 157 runs to the Indian squad at the Oval, an an innings defeat to Australia at the MCG, A ten-wicket loss to West Indies in the scenic location.

The team was soundly beaten by the Caribbean team in Grenada in spring 2022 just before Root resigned as leader.

By the end, after all those periods of health protocols and social distancing and controlled settings and repeated losses at the hands of everyone they played, they were virtually the most miserable and weary Test team England had ever sent out to a playing arena. A great deal of what Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum have done in the subsequent years was in response to all that, as well as the former's individual trials during his time away from the game in 2021 when he had suffered a series of panic attacks. It was created to emphasize to all that it was supposed to be fun, if it was supposed to be anything.

This continues to be the case now. Even when the Ashes is on the line, and although the team have finally recognized that they need to be a slightly versatile in the way they go about playing the game. Everyday life has a way of crowding in, it can be hard to hold on to the lessons we learn in our most difficult periods.

Presented is the English squad that achieved consecutive final innings pursuits of three challenging targets in one summer against the Black Caps; that achieved 378 to overcome the Indian team that identical season; that became the first touring team to win a comprehensive victory in the host nation; that showed resilience to a stalemate after going trailing by two matches in the Ashes; that defeated the Indian team in the historic venue off the back of one of the greatest innings ever executed in the subcontinent, and then overcame Pakistan in the location off the back of another.

Here we have the England team, too, that somehow end up suffering a defeat in a Test by an large margin even though the rivals made only 326; who ended up being defeated in one of the more exciting matches ever contested after making a cocksure declaration in the first innings against New Zealand, and then repeated the action against the Australian team; who were soundly beaten by a huge margin in Rajkot, and who were on the losing side of one of Sri Lanka's most notable triumphs. Between them, they have achieved some of the most improbable victories, suffered some of the ugliest dismissals, scored some of the most improbable centuries, and taken some of the most remarkable five-fers in the annals of the national sport.

Regardless of how this prestigious tournament unfolds, they have been, successively, astonishing, unbelievable, unconventional, infuriating, and entirely, without regret, unashamedly entertaining.