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Few recall the final delivery of the Ashes. It's the first that's famous. That stray ball that flies to slip, that beautiful stroke for four, that fallen stump, shattering the stumps! Last balls? I had to look them up. Ali edging a shot behind to conclude a batting effort defeat in a meaningless match in 2015; Rankin being caught in the slips off Ryan Harris, Rankin playing in his one and only Test at the tail-end of a rapid downfall in a 5-0 whitewash that's been commonplace in 2014; a Steve Harmison rising delivery glancing off Justin Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the single four the Aussies achieve in a pursuit they'll not undertake in 2005.

It separates between questioning how things will go, and understanding how they do. One thing's certain, there's no certainty there will be a happy ending. For the previous decade, the English Australian tours have finished in defeat, rather than with them. Andy Flower lost his job as coach after one humiliating defeat, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood was let go after a further defeat, in 2021-22. One could assemble a pair of XIs out of national team members who featured in their final Test match at the back end of an Australian tour during the past 25 years, and still have a few players over to act as substitutes for either side.

The current English side have not asserted to care too much about results. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the ODI squad before him, consistently states that whether or not a aerial shot is caught on the boundary isn't as important as whether it was the proper call to play it in the beginning, and while fielding he's pleased to applaud a delivery man who allows scoring shots so long as they are bringing the team nearer to taking that next wicket. But then the very reason Ben Stokes tried to instruct his squad to follow this style was so they would be in a more advantageous state to produce the kind of cricket he feels will succeed for them in Australia.

The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been training rigorously, already seems like the conclusion they can't get away from. It is this aggressive approach's decisive moment. And there are numerous warnings of defeat in the English game for the team to avoid backlash if they do experience another bad defeat in the coming weeks. Stokes's approach has been based on defying expectations, and the counterpart is it feels as if there are many individuals who would be thrilled to be proven correct.

In light of this, it's a good moment to highlight that the important question is not only where this all ends up, but if we had fun along the way. In the recent past, the English team were an completely dismal cricket team. They had been defeated in a quartet of successive tournaments and were trailing in the final one, against the Indian team, when it was postponed because of the virus. They had won a single Test match out of seventeen, and lost 12 of them by humiliating deficits. A loss by eight wickets to New Zealand at the Birmingham ground, 157 runs to the subcontinent team at the Oval, an a comprehensive loss to Australia at the MCG, 10 wickets to West Indies in the island nation.

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

By the end, after all those months of testing and isolation and restricted environments and repeated losses at the hands of everyone they played, they were just about the most dejected and careworn Test team the English cricket board had ever put on to a cricket field. A significant portion of what Ben Stokes and McCullum have accomplished in the years since 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 endured a period of mental health challenges. It was created to emphasize to all that it was intended as entertaining, if it was supposed to be anything at all.

That remains true now. Despite when the Ashes is on the line, and even if the team have eventually come to agree that they need to be a little more flexible in the way they tackle playing the game. Normal existence has a way of crowding in, it can be difficult to remember the insights we gain in our lowest moments.

Here is the England team that secured back-to-back run chases of significant totals in one period against the Black Caps; that scored 378 to defeat India that corresponding period; that became the first touring team to win a whitewash in Pakistan; that showed resilience to a stalemate after going 2-0 down in the the contest; that beat the Indian team in Hyderabad off the back of one of the greatest innings ever played in the the area, and then defeated the Pakistani team in the location off the back of another.

It is the national side, too, that unexpectedly end up losing a Test by an innings defeat even though the opposition made a modest 326; who ended up losing one of the better Tests ever staged after making a confident decision in the first innings against New Zealand, and then followed suit against the Aussies; who were routed by a huge margin in Rajkot, and who were on the unsuccessful part of one of the island nation's most notable triumphs. As a unit, they have secured some of the unlikeliest wins, endured some of the most embarrassing exits, scored some of the unlikeliest tons, and secured some of the most startling five-fers in the history of the English game.

Regardless of how this Ashes series unfolds, they have been, in turn, amazing, outrageous, ridiculous, frustrating, and completely, unrepentantly, boldly thrilling.