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People rarely mention the last ball of the Ashes. The opening delivery that's renowned. That wide that reaches the slip cordon, that elegant shot for four, that dismissal, bowled him! Concluding moments? I had to look them up. Moeen Ali edging a shot behind to end an innings loss in a dead rubber in 2015; Rankin being taken at slip off Harris, Rankin featuring in his sole Test at the tail-end of a 30-over collapse in a clean sweep that's been commonplace in 2014; a Steve Harmison short ball deflecting off Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the sole boundary the Aussies achieve in a run chase they'll not undertake in 2005.

It distinguishes between speculating how things will go, and seeing how they do. One thing's certain, there's no certainty there will be a successful conclusion. For the previous decade, the English visits to Australia have ended in ashes, rather than with them. Andy Flower lost his job as manager after an embarrassing rout, in 2013-14, Silverwood was let go after a further defeat, in 2021-22. One could assemble a two lineups out of English cricketers who played their last Test match at the tail end of an Australian tour during the previous 25 years, and even have a couple of men over to act as substitutes for either side.

Stokes' squad have never claimed to care too much about results. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the ODI squad before him, consistently states that whether or not a lifted stroke is caught on the boundary isn't as important as whether it was the correct choice to attempt it in the beginning, and in the field he's happy to clap a delivery man who concedes runs so long as they are bringing the team closer to taking that following breakthrough. But then the primary motive Stokes tried to teach his team to adopt this approach was so they would be in a more advantageous state to execute the kind of cricket he feels will perform effectively for them in Australia.

The forthcoming contest, for which they have been planning extensively, already seems like the result they are bound to face. It is Bazball's critical moment. And there are an abundance of predictions of failure in the English game for the team to escape criticism if they do experience another disappointing result in the next few weeks. Stokes's approach has been based on challenging skeptics, and the counterpart is it feels as if there are plenty of people who would be pleased to be validated.

Considering this, it's a appropriate time to point out that the important question goes beyond where this concludes, but if we enjoyed it along the way. In the recent past, the English team were an utterly abject sports team. They had been overcome in a quartet of successive tournaments and were falling behind in the fifth one, against the Indian team, when it was halted because of the pandemic. They had won a single Test match out of a series of 17, and lost a dozen of them by embarrassing margins. A loss by eight wickets to New Zealand at Edgbaston, 157 runs to India at the Oval, an a comprehensive loss to Australia at Melbourne, A ten-wicket loss to the Windies in Grenada.

England were thrashed by the Caribbean team in the island in spring 2022 just before Joe Root stepped aside 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 just about the most disheartened and careworn Test team the English cricket board had ever sent out to a cricket field. A significant portion of what Stokes and Brendon McCullum have accomplished in the subsequent years was in response to all that, as well as the Stokes' experiences during his hiatus from the game in 2021 when he had suffered a bout of anxiety. It was designed to emphasize to all that it was meant to be fun, if it was meant to be anything at all.

This continues to be the case now. Even when the the prestigious contest is on the line, and regardless if the team have finally recognized that they need to be a somewhat adaptable in the way they go about performing. Everyday life has a way of imposing, it can be difficult to retain the knowledge we acquire in our toughest times.

Here is the England team that peeled off successive run chases of significant totals in one period against the Kiwis; that achieved 378 to overcome the Indian team that identical season; that became the initial visiting side to win a clean sweep in Pakistan; that fought back to a tie after going 2-0 down in the the series; that beat the Indian team in Hyderabad off the back of one of the most remarkable knocks ever performed in the the area, and then beat Pakistan in the location off the back of another.

This is the national side, too, that unexpectedly end up being defeated in a Test by an innings even though the opposition made a relatively low total; who concluded suffering a loss in one of the better Tests ever staged after making a cocksure declaration in the first innings against New Zealand, and then followed suit against the Australian team; who were routed by 434 runs in the venue, and who were on the losing side of one of the Sri Lankan team's greatest victories. As a unit, they have recorded some of the most improbable victories, experienced some of the ugliest dismissals, made some of the unlikeliest tons, and secured some of the most surprising five-wicket hauls in the history of the national sport.

Regardless of how this Ashes series unfolds, they have been, one after another, astonishing, outrageous, ridiculous, infuriating, and entirely, unrepentantly, unapologetically thrilling.