🔗 Share this article

Few recall the final delivery of the Ashes. The opening delivery that's legendary. That stray ball that flies to slip, that beautiful stroke for four, that fallen stump, shattering the stumps! Last balls? I had to research them. Moeen Ali slicing a drive behind to end an innings loss in a inconsequential game in 2015; Rankin being grabbed by the slip fielder off Harris, Rankin participating in his one and only Test at the tail-end of a quick disintegration in a 5-0 whitewash that's been commonplace in 2014; a Harmison short ball glancing off Justin Langer's shoulder for extras, the sole boundary the Aussies manage in a pursuit they'll not undertake in 2005.

It's the difference between speculating how things will go, and seeing how they do. One thing's certain, there's no certainty there will be a happy ending. For the previous decade, the English visits to Australia have finished in defeat, instead of with them. Andy Flower was dismissed as head coach after a crushing loss, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood lost his after a further defeat, in 2021-22. You can make a two lineups out of national team members who participated in their concluding Test match at the conclusion of an tour to Australia during the last quarter-century, and still have a couple of men over to act as substitutes for each squad.

Stokes' squad have not asserted to worry excessively about results. Ben Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the one-day side before him, frequently remarks that whether or not a lofted drive is grabbed near the fence matters less as whether it was the right decision to attempt it in the first place, and during play he's happy to clap a delivery man who concedes runs so long as they are bringing the team closer to taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the primary motive Stokes tried to teach his team to adopt this approach was so they would be in a more advantageous state to execute 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 result they cannot escape. It is this bold strategy's critical moment. And there are too many predictions of failure in English cricket for the team to get away with it if they do suffer another disappointing result in the coming weeks. Stokes's approach has been based on proving everyone wrong, and the other side is it appears there are numerous observers who would be thrilled to be shown right.

Given that, it's a appropriate time to highlight that the crucial matter isn't just where this ultimately leads, but whether or not we had fun along the way. Four years ago, England were an utterly abject cricket team. They had been defeated in four straight contests and were trailing in the fifth one, against India, when it was suspended because of the virus. They had won a single Test match out of a series of 17, and lost twelve of them by embarrassing margins. A loss by eight wickets to the Kiwis at the Birmingham ground, 157 runs to the Indian squad at the the London ground, an an innings defeat to the Australians at Melbourne, 10 wickets to West Indies in the island nation.

England were thrashed by the Caribbean team in the venue in the early part of 2022 just before Joe Root stepped aside as skipper.

By the final stage, after all those months of testing and isolation and controlled settings and constant defeats at the hands of everyone they played, they were virtually the most miserable and exhausted Test team England had ever put on to a playing arena. A significant portion of what Ben Stokes and McCullum have done in the following period was in reaction to all that, as well as the Stokes' experiences during his five-month break from the game in 2021 when he had suffered a period of mental health challenges. It was created to emphasize to all that it was supposed to be fun, if it was meant to be anything at all.

It still is now. Even when the the historic series is on the line, and even if the team have eventually come to agree that they need to be a slightly versatile in the way they go about performing. Everyday life has a way of intruding, it can be hard to hold on to the lessons we learn in our most difficult periods.

Here is the England team that peeled off back-to-back fourth-innings chases of significant totals in one season against the Black Caps; that achieved a huge total to defeat the subcontinent giants that corresponding period; that became the first touring team to win a whitewash in Pakistan; that showed resilience to a stalemate after going two games behind in the Ashes; that overcame the Indian team in Hyderabad off the back of one of the finest batting displays ever executed in the the region, and then beat Pakistan in the city off the back of another.

Here we have the English squad, too, that unexpectedly end up being defeated in a Test by an innings even though the rivals made a relatively low total; who fetched up being defeated in one of the better Tests ever played after making a cocksure declaration in the first innings against the Black Caps, and then followed suit against the Australian team; who were thrashed by a massive 434 runs in the Indian city, and who were on the wrong end of one of Sri Lanka's greatest victories. Collectively, they have achieved some of the unlikeliest wins, endured some of the most embarrassing exits, achieved some of the most improbable tons, and taken some of the most surprising five-wicket hauls in the records of the national sport.

However this Ashes series shakes out, they have been, in turn, astonishing, unbelievable, absurd, infuriating, and entirely, without regret, unashamedly entertaining.