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Few recall the last ball of the Ashes. That initial ball that's renowned. That errant delivery that flies to slip, that beautiful stroke for four, that wicket, shattering the stumps! Final deliveries? I had to research them. Ali slicing a drive behind to conclude a batting effort defeat in a dead rubber in 2015; Boyd Rankin being grabbed by the slip fielder off Ryan Harris, Rankin playing in his sole Test at the tail-end of a 30-over collapse in a comprehensive defeat that's been plentiful in 2014; a Steve Harmison rising delivery deflecting off Justin Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the single four the Australian team score in a target they'll never get to make 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 happy ending. For the previous decade, the English visits to Australia have concluded in failure, as opposed to with them. Flower was dismissed as head coach after one humiliating defeat, in 2013-14, Silverwood was let go after another, in 2021-22. It's possible to form a two lineups out of England players who featured in their final Test match at the conclusion of an tour to Australia during the previous 25 years, and even have a few players over to carry the drinks for each squad.

Stokes' squad have not asserted to worry excessively about consequences. Stokes, like Morgan with the one-day side before him, consistently states that if a lofted drive is caught on the boundary isn't as important as whether or not it was the correct choice to attempt it in the first place, and in the field he's happy to clap a bowler who concedes runs so long as they bringing the team toward taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the key rationale Stokes tried to teach his team to follow this style was so they would be in a better position to produce the brand of the game he believes will do well for them in Australia.

The forthcoming contest, for which they have been planning extensively, already feels like the outcome they are bound to face. It is Bazball's critical moment. And there are numerous “I told you so’s” in English cricket for the team to escape criticism if they do experience another disappointing result in the upcoming period. His methodology has been predicated on proving everyone wrong, and the flipside is it feels as if there are plenty of people who would be thrilled to be proven correct.

Given that, it's a appropriate time to point out that the crucial matter goes beyond 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 four straight contests and were trailing in the fifth, against India, when it was halted because of Covid. They had won a single Test match out of seventeen, and lost a dozen of them by embarrassing margins. Eight wickets to New Zealand at Edgbaston, A 157-run loss to India at the Oval, an an innings defeat to the Australians at the MCG, A defeat by ten wickets to West Indies in Grenada.

The English side was routed by West Indies in Grenada in the early part of 2022 just before Root stepped down as leader.

By the final stage, after all those stretches of health protocols and isolation and controlled settings and repeated losses at the hands of each rival, they were practically the most disheartened and careworn Test team the English cricket board had ever put on to a cricket field. So much of what Stokes and McCullum have accomplished in the subsequent years was in response to all that, as well as the Stokes' personal encounters during his five-month break from the game in 2021 when he had suffered a period of mental health challenges. It was created to make people recall that it was intended as fun, if it was intended as anything at all.

That remains true now. Despite when the the historic series is on the line, and even if the team have finally recognized that they need to be a little more flexible in the way they go about performing. Everyday life has a way of imposing, it can be difficult to hold on to the lessons we learn in our lowest moments.

Here is the national side that achieved successive run chases of significant totals in one period against the Kiwis; that achieved 378 to overcome the subcontinent giants that identical season; that became the pioneering away squad to win a clean sweep in the subcontinent country; that showed resilience to a tie after going 2-0 down in the Ashes; that defeated India in Hyderabad off the back of one of the finest batting displays ever played in the subcontinent, and then overcame the Pakistani team in the location off the back of a subsequent one.

It is the English squad, too, that managed to end up losing a Test by an innings defeat even though the opposition made a modest 326; who ended up suffering a loss in one of the more exciting matches ever played after making a confident decision in the first innings against the Kiwis, and then did the same thing against the Aussies; who were routed by a massive 434 runs in the venue, and who were on the losing side of one of the Sri Lankan team's finest wins. Collectively, they have recorded some of the surprising successes, endured some of the poorest performances, scored some of the surprising centuries, and secured some of the most startling five-wicket hauls in the records of the English game.

Regardless of how this prestigious tournament shakes out, they have been, successively, incredible, unbelievable, absurd, exasperating, and completely, unrepentantly, unapologetically entertaining.