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Few recall the last ball of the Ashes. That initial ball that's legendary. That stray ball that reaches the slip cordon, that elegant shot for four, that dismissal, shattering the stumps! Concluding moments? I needed to check. Moeen Ali cutting a stroke behind to end an innings loss in a dead rubber in 2015; Rankin being grabbed by the slip fielder off Ryan Harris, Rankin playing in his single Test at the fag-end of a 30-over collapse in a comprehensive defeat that's been full of them in 2014; a Harmison rising delivery deflecting off Justin Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the single four the Aussies achieve in a pursuit they'll never get to make in 2005.

It separates between wondering how things will go, and understanding how they do. One thing's certain, there's no assurance there will be a happy ending. For the last decade, England's Australian tours have ended in ashes, rather than with them. Flower was removed as head coach after one humiliating defeat, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood was sacked after a further defeat, in 2021-22. You can make a two lineups out of national team members who featured in their final Test match at the tail end of an trip Down Under during the previous 25 years, and still have a few players over to carry the drinks for each squad.

This England team have not asserted to worry excessively about outcomes. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the one-day side before him, always says that whether or not a aerial shot is caught on the boundary isn't as important as if it was the right decision to play it in the first place, and during play he's pleased to applaud a pitcher who allows scoring shots so long as they help bring the team nearer to taking that following breakthrough. But then the very reason Ben Stokes tried to teach his team to follow this style was so they would be in a superior situation to produce the brand of the game he thinks will do well for them in Australia.

The forthcoming contest, for which they have been preparing for so long, already feels like the conclusion they are bound to face. It is Bazball's make or break moment. And there are an abundance of “I told you so’s” in the national sport for the team to get away with it if they do suffer another poor loss in the coming weeks. The captain's strategy has been based on challenging skeptics, and the counterpart is it seems that there are numerous observers who would be pleased to be shown right.

In light of this, it's a good moment to point out that the key issue isn't just where this ultimately leads, but if we had fun along the way. In the recent past, the English team were an completely dismal sports team. They had been defeated in four consecutive series and were trailing in the fifth one, against the Indian team, when it was halted because of the virus. They had won a single Test match out of seventeen, and lost 12 of them by humiliating deficits. An eight-wicket defeat to the Black Caps at Edgbaston, A defeat by 157 runs to the subcontinent team at the the London ground, an an innings defeat to Australia at the iconic ground, A defeat by ten wickets to West Indies in the island nation.

England were thrashed by the Caribbean team in the island in the early part of 2022 just before Joe Root resigned as skipper.

By the end, after all those months of testing and isolation and restricted environments and endless beatings at the hands of each rival, they were virtually the most disheartened and careworn Test team England had ever sent out to a cricket field. A significant portion of what Stokes and McCullum have achieved 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 suffered a bout of anxiety. It was intended to make people recall that it was supposed to be fun, if it was intended as anything.

That remains true now. Even when the the historic series 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. Everyday life has a way of crowding in, it can be difficult to remember the knowledge we acquire in our lowest moments.

This is the national side that secured consecutive run chases of three challenging targets in one season against New Zealand; that achieved a huge total to beat the Indian team that same summer; that became the initial visiting side to win a comprehensive victory in the host nation; that battled hard to a draw after going 2-0 down in the the contest; that overcame the Indian team in the southern city off the back of one of the greatest innings ever executed in the the area, and then defeated the Pakistani team in the city off the back of a subsequent one.

It is the England team, too, that managed to end up being defeated in a Test by an large margin even though the other team made a relatively low total; who ended up losing one of the better Tests ever contested after making a bold declaration in the opening session against the Kiwis, and then did the same thing against the Australian team; who were thrashed by 434 runs in the venue, and who were on the losing side of one of Sri Lanka's greatest victories. Between them, they have achieved some of the most improbable victories, experienced some of the most embarrassing exits, achieved some of the unlikeliest hundreds, and taken some of the most startling exceptional bowling spells in the records of the national sport.

No matter how this prestigious tournament shakes out, they have been, successively, incredible, preposterous, absurd, frustrating, and completely, unrepentantly, boldly entertaining.