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People rarely mention the concluding moment of the Ashes. It's the first that's renowned. That errant delivery that reaches the slip cordon, that beautiful stroke for four, that fallen stump, clean bowled! Final deliveries? I needed to check. Ali slicing a drive behind to end an innings defeat in a dead rubber in 2015; Boyd Rankin being grabbed by the slip fielder off Harris, Boyd Rankin participating in his single Test at the tail-end of a 30-over collapse in a 5-0 whitewash that's been plentiful in 2014; a Harmison short ball deflecting off Justin Langer's shoulder for runs, the sole boundary the Australian team achieve in a target they'll never get to make in 2005.

It distinguishes between questioning how things will go, and knowing how they do. One undeniable fact, there's no certainty there will be a positive outcome. For the past ten years, the English Australian tours have concluded in failure, rather than with them. Andy Flower lost his job as manager 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 conclusion of an trip Down Under during the past 25 years, and even have a few players over to act as substitutes for both teams.

This England team have not professed to be overly concerned about outcomes. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the limited-overs team before him, always says that whether or not a lofted drive is grabbed near the fence matters less as whether it was the right decision to attempt it in the outset, and in the field he's happy to clap a pitcher who concedes runs so long as they are bringing the team closer to taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the very reason Ben Stokes tried to teach his team to follow this style was so they would be in a more advantageous state to execute the style of play he believes will do well for them in Australia.

The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been training rigorously, already feels like the result they can't get away from. It is this bold strategy's decisive moment. And there are numerous “I told you so’s” in the national sport for the team to get away with it if they do suffer another bad defeat in the upcoming period. The captain's strategy has been based on challenging skeptics, and the counterpart is it appears there are many individuals who would be delighted to be validated.

Given that, it's a suitable occasion to point out that the key issue goes beyond where this concludes, but whether or not we found pleasure along the way. In the recent past, the English team were an utterly abject sports team. They had been overcome in four consecutive series and were lagging in the final one, against India, when it was halted because of the pandemic. They had won a single Test match out of seventeen, and lost twelve of them by embarrassing margins. An eight-wicket defeat to the Kiwis at the historic venue, A defeat by 157 runs to India at the Oval, an an innings defeat to the Aussie team at the iconic ground, A defeat by ten wickets to the Caribbean side in the scenic location.

England were thrashed by the Windies in Grenada in March 2022 just before Joe Root resigned as leader.

By the conclusion, after all those stretches of testing and social distancing and biosecure bubbles and repeated losses at the hands of all opponents, they were just about the most disheartened and careworn Test team the English cricket board had ever put on to a playing arena. A great deal of what Ben Stokes and McCullum have done in the years since was in reaction to all that, as well as the Stokes' individual trials during his hiatus from the game in 2021 when he had endured a bout of anxiety. It was intended to make people recall that it was supposed to be enjoyable, if it was meant to be anything at all.

This continues to be the case now. Although the the prestigious contest is on the line, and although the team have ultimately accepted that they need to be a little more flexible in the way they go about competing. Everyday life has a way of crowding in, it can be challenging to remember the insights we gain in our most difficult periods.

This is the English squad that secured consecutive fourth-innings chases of three challenging targets in one summer against the Black Caps; that made a massive 378 to beat India that corresponding period; that became the first touring team to win a comprehensive victory in Pakistan; that battled hard to a tie after going two games behind in the Ashes; that overcame the Indian team in the historic venue off the back of one of the finest batting displays ever played in the the region, and then overcame the Pakistani team in the city off the back of a subsequent one.

This is the national side, too, that somehow end up being defeated in a Test by an large margin even though the other team made a relatively low total; who concluded losing one of the more exciting matches ever contested after making a confident decision in the first innings against the Kiwis, and then did the same thing against the Australian team; who were thrashed by 434 runs in the venue, and who were on the wrong end of one of Sri Lanka's most notable triumphs. Collectively, they have recorded some of the unlikeliest wins, endured some of the poorest performances, achieved some of the unlikeliest hundreds, and secured some of the most startling five-fers in the records of the national sport.

However this Ashes series concludes, they have been, successively, astonishing, unbelievable, absurd, frustrating, and totally, unrepentantly, unashamedly enjoyable.