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Few recall the last ball of the Ashes. It's the first that's legendary. That stray ball that flies to slip, that elegant shot for four, that dismissal, bowled him! Last balls? I needed to check. Moeen Ali edging a shot behind to conclude a batting effort defeat in a dead rubber in 2015; Boyd Rankin being grabbed by the slip fielder off Ryan Harris, Boyd Rankin participating in his sole Test at the fag-end of a rapid downfall in a 5-0 whitewash that's been plentiful in 2014; a Harmison bouncer ricocheting away Justin Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the sole boundary the Aussies score in a pursuit they'll not undertake in 2005.

It distinguishes between speculating how things will go, and seeing how they do. One undeniable fact, there's no guarantee there will be a successful conclusion. For the last decade, the English Australian tours have finished in defeat, instead of with them. Flower was dismissed as head coach after an embarrassing rout, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood lost his after a subsequent one, in 2021-22. You can make a pair of XIs out of England players who played their last Test match at the back end of an trip Down Under during the past 25 years, and still have a few players over to serve as reserves for both teams.

This England team have not asserted to care too much about outcomes. Ben Stokes, like Morgan with the ODI squad before him, frequently remarks that if a lifted stroke is taken at the rope matters less as if it was the right decision to play it in the beginning, and during play he's quick to praise a pitcher who gives away boundaries so long as they help bring the team closer to taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the key rationale Stokes tried to teach his team to adopt this approach was so they would be in a more advantageous state to execute the brand of the game he thinks will succeed for them in Australia.

The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been training rigorously, already appears as the conclusion they cannot escape. It is Bazball's make or break moment. And there are too many predictions of failure in the national sport for the team to avoid backlash if they do endure a further disappointing result in the next few weeks. Stokes's approach has been based on challenging skeptics, and the other side is it appears there are plenty of people who would be pleased to be shown right.

In light of this, it's a appropriate time to highlight that the crucial matter isn't just where this ultimately leads, but if we found pleasure along the way. In the recent past, England were an utterly abject sports team. They had been beaten in a quartet of successive tournaments and were trailing in the fifth one, against the Indian team, when it was suspended because of the pandemic. They had won only one Test match out of seventeen, and lost 12 of them by large defeats. A loss by eight wickets to the Kiwis at Edgbaston, 157 runs to India at the the London ground, an a comprehensive loss to the Australians at Melbourne, A defeat by ten wickets to the Caribbean side in Grenada.

England were thrashed by the Caribbean team in Grenada in the early part of 2022 just before Joe Root stepped down as captain.

By the conclusion, after all those stretches of nasal swabs and social distancing and controlled settings and repeated losses at the hands of each rival, they were practically the most dejected and careworn Test team England had ever sent out to a playing arena. A significant portion of what Stokes and McCullum have accomplished in the subsequent years was in response to all that, as well as the Stokes' experiences during his time away from the game in 2021 when he had endured a period of mental health challenges. It was intended to emphasize to all that it was intended as enjoyable, if it was meant to be anything.

That remains true now. Even 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 approach competing. Everyday life has a way of imposing, it can be hard to retain the insights we gain in our lowest moments.

This is the England team that secured back-to-back run chases of three challenging targets in one summer against the Kiwis; that scored 378 to defeat the subcontinent giants that same summer; that became the initial visiting side to win a comprehensive victory in the subcontinent country; that showed resilience to a stalemate after going 2-0 down in the the series; that overcame the Indian team in the southern city off the back of one of the most remarkable knocks ever played in the subcontinent, and then beat the Pakistani team in the location off the back of another.

This is the national side, too, that managed to end up suffering a defeat in a Test by an large margin even though the rivals made only 326; who fetched up being defeated in one of the more exciting matches ever staged after making a cocksure declaration in the initial batting effort against New Zealand, and then did the same thing against Australia; who were routed by a huge margin in Rajkot, and who were on the unsuccessful part of one of Sri Lanka's finest wins. Collectively, they have secured some of the unlikeliest wins, endured some of the poorest performances, achieved some of the unlikeliest hundreds, and achieved some of the most startling exceptional bowling spells in the history of the English game.

However this Ashes series shakes out, they have been, in turn, astonishing, unbelievable, absurd, exasperating, and entirely, unrepentantly, boldly thrilling.