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Nobody talks about the last ball of the Ashes. It's the first that's renowned. That errant delivery that reaches the slip cordon, that cover drive for four, that wicket, clean bowled! Concluding moments? I had to look them up. Moeen Ali slicing a drive behind to end an innings defeat in a inconsequential game in 2015; Boyd Rankin being taken at slip off Harris, Boyd Rankin playing in his single Test at the tail-end of a rapid downfall in a 5-0 whitewash that's been full of them in 2014; a Harmison short ball ricocheting away Langer's shoulder for runs, the single four Australia achieve in a pursuit they'll not attempt in 2005.

It distinguishes between speculating how things will go, and knowing how they do. One undeniable fact, there's no certainty there will be a successful conclusion. For the previous decade, England's Australian tours have concluded in failure, as opposed to with them. Andy Flower was dismissed as coach after an embarrassing rout, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood was sacked after a subsequent one, in 2021-22. You can make a pair of XIs out of national team members who participated in their concluding Test match at the tail end of an Australian tour during the previous 25 years, and even have a few players over to serve as reserves for either side.

This England team have not asserted to be overly concerned about consequences. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the one-day side before him, consistently states that regardless of whether a lofted drive is grabbed near the fence matters less as if it was the right decision to execute it in the outset, and in the field he's quick to praise a bowler who allows scoring shots so long as they bringing the team nearer to taking that following breakthrough. But then the primary motive Ben Stokes tried to guide his players to play this way was so they would be in a superior situation to produce the kind of cricket he believes will succeed for them in Australia.

The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been preparing for so long, already seems like the outcome they can't get away from. It is this bold strategy's critical moment. And there are an abundance of predictions of failure in the English game 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 challenging skeptics, 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 good moment to emphasize that the crucial matter goes beyond where this all ends up, but regardless of whether we enjoyed it along the way. In the recent past, England were an utterly abject sports team. They had been defeated in a quartet of successive tournaments and were lagging in the fifth, against India, when it was suspended because of Covid. They had won only one Test match out of a series of 17, and lost a dozen of them by large defeats. Eight wickets to the Kiwis at the Birmingham ground, A 157-run loss to India at the Oval, an innings and 14 runs to the Australians at Melbourne, A defeat by ten wickets to the Windies in the island nation.

England were thrashed by the Windies in Grenada in the early part of 2022 just before Joe Root stepped aside as leader.

By the end, after all those stretches of testing and isolation and restricted environments and repeated losses at the hands of each rival, they were virtually the most disheartened and weary Test team England had ever fielded to a cricket field. So much of what Ben 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 designed to make people recall that it was intended as entertaining, 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 even if the team have eventually come to agree that they need to be a little more flexible in the way they approach competing. Everyday life has a way of intruding, it can be challenging to hold on to the lessons we learn in our toughest times.

Presented is the national side that achieved successive run chases of three challenging targets in one season against New Zealand; that made a huge total to overcome the subcontinent giants that same summer; that became the first touring team to win a whitewash in the subcontinent country; that battled hard to a stalemate after going 2-0 down in the the series; that defeated India in Hyderabad off the back of one of the finest batting displays ever performed in the the area, and then overcame the Pakistani team in Multan off the back of a subsequent one.

It is the England team, too, that unexpectedly end up losing a Test by an large margin even though the other team made a modest 326; who ended up losing one of the finer contests ever contested after making a cocksure declaration in the opening session against the Black Caps, and then did the same thing against the Aussies; who were soundly beaten by a huge margin in the Indian city, and who were on the unsuccessful part of one of the Sri Lankan team's finest wins. Collectively, they have secured some of the unlikeliest wins, experienced some of the ugliest dismissals, achieved some of the most improbable tons, and achieved some of the most surprising five-wicket hauls in the history of the English game.

However this Ashes series concludes, they have been, one after another, incredible, unbelievable, unconventional, infuriating, and entirely, without regret, unapologetically thrilling.