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Few recall the concluding moment of the Ashes. It's the first that's legendary. That stray ball that flies to slip, that beautiful stroke for four, that wicket, clean bowled! Final deliveries? I had to research them. Moeen Ali cutting a stroke behind to conclude a batting effort loss in a dead rubber in 2015; Boyd Rankin being taken at slip off Harris, Rankin playing in his single Test at the fag-end of a rapid downfall in a comprehensive defeat that's been commonplace in 2014; a Harmison bouncer glancing off Justin Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the only four the Australian team manage in a target they'll never get to make in 2005.

It's the difference between questioning how things will go, and seeing how they do. One thing's certain, there's no guarantee there will be a positive outcome. For the previous decade, England's trips Down Under have ended in ashes, as opposed to with them. Flower lost his job as coach after one humiliating defeat, in 2013-14, Silverwood was let go after a subsequent one, in 2021-22. It's possible to form a couple of teams out of English cricketers who featured in their final Test match at the tail end of an tour to Australia during the past 25 years, and even have a couple of men over to act as substitutes for either side.

This England team have never claimed to worry excessively about outcomes. Stokes, like Morgan with the ODI squad before him, always says that if a lifted stroke is caught on the boundary is secondary as if it was the correct choice to attempt it in the outset, and while fielding he's happy to clap a bowler who concedes runs so long as they are bringing the team nearer to taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the key rationale Ben Stokes tried to instruct his squad to follow this style was so they would be in a better position to produce the kind of cricket he thinks will succeed for them in Australia.

This Ashes series, for which they have been planning extensively, already appears as the result they are bound to face. It is this bold strategy's decisive moment. And there are an abundance of predictions of failure in the national sport for the team to get away with it if they do experience another bad defeat in the coming weeks. The captain's strategy has been predicated on proving everyone wrong, and the counterpart is it seems that there are many individuals who would be pleased to be shown right.

In light of this, it's a suitable occasion to highlight that the crucial matter is not only where this ultimately leads, but whether or not we found pleasure along the way. A few years back, the English team were an utterly abject national side. They had been defeated in four straight contests and were trailing in the fifth one, against India, when it was halted because of the pandemic. They had won only one Test match out of seventeen, and lost a dozen of them by large defeats. Eight wickets to New Zealand at Edgbaston, A defeat by 157 runs to India at the the London ground, an a comprehensive loss to the Aussie team at Melbourne, A ten-wicket loss to West Indies in the scenic location.

The team was soundly beaten by the Windies in the island in spring 2022 just before Joe Root stepped aside as skipper.

By the end, after all those stretches of health protocols and social distancing and biosecure bubbles and constant defeats at the hands of everyone they played, they were just about the most disheartened and careworn Test team England had ever sent out to a playing arena. A significant portion of what Stokes and McCullum have achieved in the years since 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 suffered a period of mental health challenges. It was intended to emphasize to all that it was meant to be fun, if it was supposed to be something.

It still is now. Even when the Ashes is on the line, and although the team have eventually come to agree that they need to be a slightly versatile in the way they go about performing. Daily routines has a way of crowding in, it can be difficult to remember the knowledge we acquire in our lowest moments.

Presented is the English squad that secured back-to-back final innings pursuits of three challenging targets in one season against the Kiwis; that achieved a massive 378 to defeat India that identical season; that became the initial visiting side to win a whitewash in the host nation; that fought back to a draw after going trailing by two matches in the Ashes; that beat India in the southern city off the back of one of the greatest innings ever played in the the area, and then beat the Pakistani team in the city off the back of a subsequent one.

This is the England team, too, that managed to end up being defeated in a Test by an large margin even though the opposition made only 326; who fetched up suffering a loss in one of the better Tests ever contested after making a cocksure declaration in the opening session against New Zealand, and then followed suit against the Aussies; who were routed by 434 runs in the venue, and who were on the wrong end of one of Sri Lanka'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 surprising hundreds, and achieved some of the most remarkable five-wicket hauls in the annals of the English game.

No matter how this historic contest shakes out, they have been, successively, incredible, outrageous, ridiculous, infuriating, and totally, unrepentantly, boldly thrilling.