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People rarely mention the concluding moment of the Ashes. That initial ball that's legendary. That wide that goes to the slips, that elegant shot for four, that fallen stump, clean bowled! Final deliveries? I had to look them up. Moeen Ali cutting a stroke behind to finish an innings defeat in a dead rubber in 2015; Boyd Rankin being caught in the slips 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 commonplace in 2014; a Harmison bouncer glancing off Justin Langer's shoulder for runs, the single four the Australian team achieve in a run chase they'll not undertake in 2005.

It's the difference between wondering how things will go, and understanding how they do. One certainty is, there's no assurance there will be a positive outcome. For the previous decade, the English visits to Australia have finished in defeat, rather than with them. Flower lost his job as manager after a crushing loss, in 2013-14, Silverwood lost his after a subsequent one, in 2021-22. One could assemble a pair of XIs out of England players who played their last Test match at the back end of an tour to Australia during the past 25 years, and even have a couple of men over to act as substitutes for each squad.

The current English side have never claimed to care too much about consequences. Ben Stokes, like Morgan with the ODI squad before him, frequently remarks that if a lifted stroke is caught on the boundary is secondary as if it was the right decision to play it in the outset, and in the field he's quick to praise a pitcher who gives away boundaries so long as they are bringing the team toward taking that following breakthrough. But then the very reason Stokes tried to guide his players to follow this style was so they would be in a more advantageous state to deliver the kind of cricket he thinks will do well for them in Australia.

The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been planning extensively, already seems like the result they can't get away from. It is this aggressive approach's decisive moment. And there are too many warnings of defeat in English cricket for the team to avoid backlash if they do endure a further poor loss in the next few weeks. The captain's strategy has been based on proving everyone wrong, and the flipside is it feels as if there are numerous observers who would be thrilled to be shown right.

In light of this, it's a appropriate time to point out that the key issue goes beyond where this all ends up, but whether or not we enjoyed it along the way. Four years ago, the English team were an thoroughly poor cricket team. They had been overcome in four consecutive series and were falling behind in the fifth one, against the Indian team, when it was halted because of the virus. They had won only one Test match out of 17, and lost 12 of them by large defeats. A loss by eight wickets to New Zealand at Edgbaston, A defeat by 157 runs to the Indian squad at the the famous stadium, an innings and 14 runs to Australia at Melbourne, A defeat by ten wickets to West Indies in the island nation.

The English side was routed by West Indies in Grenada in March 2022 just before Root resigned as skipper.

By the conclusion, after all those periods of testing and isolation and restricted environments and constant defeats at the hands of all opponents, they were just about the most miserable and exhausted Test team the English cricket board had ever sent out to a cricket field. So much of what Stokes and Brendon McCullum have done in the following period was in reaction to all that, as well as the former's individual trials during his five-month break from the game in 2021 when he had experienced a period of mental health challenges. It was created to remind everyone that it was supposed to be fun, if it was meant to be something.

That remains true now. Despite when the Ashes is on the line, and even if the team have ultimately accepted that they need to be a somewhat adaptable in the way they go about competing. Normal existence has a way of intruding, it can be difficult to remember the lessons we learn in our lowest moments.

This is the England team that secured successive fourth-innings chases of three challenging targets in one period against the Kiwis; that made 378 to overcome India that identical season; that became the pioneering away squad to win a comprehensive victory in the host nation; that showed resilience to a draw after going 2-0 down in the the contest; that beat India in the southern city off the back of one of the most remarkable knocks ever executed in the the region, and then overcame Pakistan in the city off the back of a further exceptional performance.

Here we have the national side, too, that unexpectedly end up suffering a defeat in a Test by an innings even though the rivals made a modest 326; who concluded losing one of the finer contests ever contested after making a bold declaration in the opening session against New Zealand, and then repeated the action against Australia; who were routed by a huge margin in the Indian city, and who were on the unsuccessful part of one of the island nation's greatest victories. Between them, they have achieved some of the surprising successes, experienced some of the ugliest dismissals, scored some of the most improbable centuries, and achieved some of the most remarkable five-wicket hauls in the records of English cricket.

However this prestigious tournament unfolds, they have been, successively, amazing, outrageous, unconventional, frustrating, and totally, without regret, unapologetically entertaining.