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People rarely mention the last ball of the Ashes. The opening delivery that's famous. That stray ball that flies to slip, that elegant shot for four, that fallen stump, shattering the stumps! Final deliveries? I had to research them. Moeen Ali slicing a drive behind to finish an innings loss in a meaningless match in 2015; Rankin being caught in the slips off Ryan Harris, Boyd Rankin featuring in his one and only Test at the tail-end of a rapid downfall in a clean sweep that's been plentiful in 2014; a Steve Harmison rising delivery glancing off Langer's shoulder for runs, the sole boundary Australia score in a target they'll not undertake in 2005.

It separates between speculating how things will go, and seeing how they do. One thing's certain, there's no assurance there will be a positive outcome. For the last decade, the English trips Down Under have ended in ashes, rather than with them. Andy Flower was removed as head coach after an embarrassing rout, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood lost his after another, in 2021-22. One could assemble a pair of XIs out of national team members who featured in their final Test match at the tail end of an Australian tour during the past 25 years, and even have a few players over to act as substitutes for both teams.

The current English side have not professed to care too much about results. Ben Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the one-day side before him, frequently remarks that if a aerial shot is taken at the rope isn't as important as whether it was the right decision to play it in the outset, and in the field he's pleased to applaud a bowler who allows scoring shots so long as they help bring the team toward taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the primary motive Stokes tried to teach his team to follow this style was so they would be in a better position to deliver the style of play he feels will succeed for them in Australia.

The forthcoming contest, for which they have been preparing for so long, already seems like the conclusion they are bound to face. It is this bold strategy's make or break moment. And there are too many predictions of failure in the English game for the team to escape criticism if they do endure a further poor loss in the coming weeks. Stokes's approach has been founded on defying expectations, and the other side is it feels as if there are plenty of people who would be thrilled to be shown right.

In light of this, it's a appropriate time to point out that the key issue is not only where this concludes, but regardless of whether we had fun along the way. A few years back, the English team were an thoroughly poor national side. They had been overcome in a quartet of successive tournaments and were lagging in the fifth, against India, when it was suspended because of the pandemic. They had won only one Test match out of a series of 17, and lost a dozen of them by large defeats. An eight-wicket defeat to the Kiwis at Edgbaston, A defeat by 157 runs to India at the Oval, an innings and 14 runs to the Aussie team at the MCG, A ten-wicket loss to the Windies in the scenic location.

The team was soundly beaten by the Caribbean team in the venue in the early part of 2022 just before Joe Root stepped down as skipper.

By the final stage, after all those stretches of nasal swabs and isolation and restricted environments and endless beatings at the hands of each rival, they were practically the most disheartened and exhausted Test team the English cricket board had ever put on to a cricket field. A significant portion of what Ben Stokes and McCullum have done in the following period was in a consequence of all that, as well as the former's individual trials 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 entertaining, if it was meant to be anything.

That remains true now. Despite when the the historic series is on the line, and although 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 imposing, it can be hard to retain the lessons we learn in our lowest moments.

This is the national side that achieved back-to-back final innings pursuits of three challenging targets in one summer against the Black Caps; that scored a massive 378 to beat India that identical season; that became the first touring team to win a clean sweep in the host nation; that battled hard to a draw after going trailing by two matches in the the series; that defeated India in the historic venue off the back of one of the finest batting displays ever played in the subcontinent, and then beat the Pakistani team in the city off the back of another.

Here we have the England team, too, that unexpectedly end up being defeated in a Test by an innings defeat even though the opposition made a relatively low total; who concluded losing one of the better Tests ever played after making a cocksure declaration in the first innings against the Kiwis, and then did the same thing against the Aussies; who were routed by 434 runs in the venue, and who were on the wrong end of one of the island nation's greatest victories. As a unit, they have achieved some of the unlikeliest wins, endured some of the ugliest dismissals, made some of the unlikeliest tons, and achieved some of the most remarkable exceptional bowling spells in the annals of the national sport.

However this Ashes series concludes, they have been, one after another, incredible, outrageous, absurd, frustrating, and completely, unapologetically, unapologetically entertaining.