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Nobody talks about the final delivery of the Ashes. That initial ball that's renowned. That errant delivery that goes to the slips, that elegant shot for four, that fallen stump, clean bowled! Last balls? I had to look them up. Moeen Ali edging a shot behind to conclude a batting effort defeat in a inconsequential game in 2015; Rankin being caught in the slips off Harris, Rankin participating in his sole Test at the tail-end of a 30-over collapse in a comprehensive defeat that's been full of them in 2014; a Harmison short ball glancing off Justin Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the only four the Aussies score in a pursuit they'll not undertake in 2005.

It separates between questioning how things will go, and knowing how they do. One thing's certain, there's no assurance there will be a happy ending. For the last decade, the English Australian tours have finished in defeat, rather than with them. Flower was dismissed as head coach after a crushing loss, in 2013-14, Silverwood was sacked after another, in 2021-22. You can make a pair of XIs out of national team members who played their last Test match at the conclusion of an Australian tour during the past 25 years, and additionally have a couple of men over to act as substitutes for either side.

This England team have never claimed to be overly concerned about results. Ben Stokes, like Morgan with the ODI squad before him, consistently states that regardless of whether a aerial shot is taken at the rope is secondary as if it was the right decision to attempt it in the beginning, and during play he's quick to praise a delivery man who allows scoring shots so long as they are bringing the team toward taking that following breakthrough. But then the key rationale Stokes tried to teach his team to follow this style was so they would be in a superior situation to deliver the brand of the game he feels will perform effectively for them in Australia.

This Ashes series, for which they have been training rigorously, already feels like the result they can't get away from. It is this aggressive approach's critical moment. And there are an abundance of predictions of failure in the national sport for the team to avoid backlash if they do experience another poor loss in the next few weeks. The captain's strategy has been based on challenging skeptics, and the counterpart is it seems that there are plenty of people who would be thrilled to be validated.

Given that, it's a suitable occasion to emphasize that the crucial matter is not only where this concludes, but whether or not we enjoyed it along the way. Four years ago, the English team were an completely dismal national side. They had been defeated in a quartet of successive tournaments and were lagging in the fifth one, against the Indian team, when it was postponed because of Covid. They had won exactly one Test match out of 17, and lost 12 of them by large defeats. A loss by eight wickets to the Kiwis at the historic venue, A defeat by 157 runs to the subcontinent team at the the famous stadium, an an innings defeat to the Aussie team at Melbourne, 10 wickets to West Indies in Grenada.

The team was soundly beaten by West Indies in the island in the early part of 2022 just before Joe Root stepped aside as captain.

By the final stage, after all those periods of testing and social distancing and restricted environments and repeated losses at the hands of all opponents, they were virtually the most disheartened and careworn Test team England had ever put on to a playing arena. A significant portion of what Stokes and McCullum have done in the following period was in reaction to all that, as well as the former's individual trials during his hiatus from the game in 2021 when he had experienced a bout of anxiety. It was designed to make people recall that it was intended as fun, if it was meant to be anything at all.

That remains true now. Even when the the prestigious contest is on the line, and regardless if the team have finally recognized that they need to be a little more flexible in the way they go about competing. Normal existence has a way of intruding, it can be hard to remember the lessons we learn in our lowest moments.

This is the national side that achieved consecutive fourth-innings chases of 277, 299, and 296 in one season against the Black Caps; that achieved a massive 378 to defeat the subcontinent giants that corresponding period; that became the pioneering away squad to win a whitewash in the host nation; that fought back to a tie after going two games behind in the the contest; that overcame India in the southern city off the back of one of the finest batting displays ever played in the the area, and then overcame Pakistan in the city off the back of a subsequent one.

This is the national side, too, that unexpectedly end up losing a Test by an innings defeat even though the other team made a modest 326; who ended up suffering a loss in one of the more exciting matches ever contested after making a cocksure declaration in the initial batting effort against the Kiwis, and then did the same thing against the Aussies; who were routed by a massive 434 runs in Rajkot, and who were on the wrong end of one of the Sri Lankan team's greatest victories. Between them, they have secured some of the surprising successes, experienced some of the most embarrassing exits, scored some of the unlikeliest centuries, and secured some of the most startling five-wicket hauls in the records of the English game.

No matter how this historic contest shakes out, they have been, successively, amazing, outrageous, unconventional, frustrating, and entirely, unapologetically, unashamedly thrilling.