Ben Stokes' team have demonstrated the world that this great game is meant to be entertainment.

Few recall the last ball of the Ashes. The opening delivery that's famous. That wide that reaches the slip cordon, that elegant shot for four, that wicket, bowled him! Final deliveries? I had to look them up. Moeen Ali edging a shot behind to conclude a batting effort defeat in a meaningless match in 2015; Rankin being caught in the slips off Harris, Rankin featuring in his single Test at the fag-end of a quick disintegration in a 5-0 whitewash that's been commonplace in 2014; a Steve Harmison rising delivery ricocheting away Langer's shoulder for extras, the single four the Australian team manage in a pursuit they'll not attempt in 2005.

It separates between questioning how things will go, and understanding how they do. One undeniable fact, there's no guarantee there will be a happy ending. For the past ten years, the English trips Down Under have concluded in failure, instead of with them. Flower was removed as coach after a crushing loss, 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 England players who played their last Test match at the back end of an Australian tour during the past 25 years, and additionally have a few players over to act as substitutes for both teams.

This England team have never claimed to worry excessively about outcomes. Stokes, like Morgan with the ODI squad before him, consistently states that whether or not a lofted drive is caught on the boundary isn't as important as whether or not it was the correct choice to attempt it in the beginning, and during play he's happy to clap a pitcher who concedes runs 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 play this way was so they would be in a more advantageous state to deliver the kind of cricket he feels will perform effectively for them in Australia.

The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been planning extensively, already appears as the conclusion they are bound to face. It is Bazball's decisive moment. And there are too many predictions of failure in the English game for the team to get away with it if they do experience another poor loss in the upcoming period. His methodology has been predicated on defying expectations, and the other side is it appears there are many individuals who would be thrilled to be shown right.

Considering this, it's a appropriate time to emphasize that the crucial matter is not only where this concludes, but whether or not we enjoyed it along the way. A few years back, England were an utterly abject cricket team. They had been overcome in four straight contests and were lagging in the fifth one, against the Indian team, when it was halted because of the pandemic. They had won exactly one Test match out of seventeen, and lost 12 of them by humiliating deficits. A loss by eight wickets to the Kiwis at Edgbaston, A defeat by 157 runs to the Indian squad at the the London ground, an a comprehensive loss to the Aussie team at the iconic ground, A defeat by ten wickets to the Windies in the island nation.

The English side was routed by the Windies in the venue in the early part of 2022 just before Joe Root stepped aside as captain.

By the final stage, after all those stretches of testing and isolation and controlled settings and repeated losses at the hands of all opponents, they were just about the most disheartened and careworn Test team England had ever sent out to a cricket field. So much of what Stokes and Brendon McCullum have done in the years since was in a consequence of all that, as well as the former's experiences during his time away from the game in 2021 when he had suffered a period of mental health challenges. It was created to remind everyone that it was meant to be entertaining, if it was intended as anything at all.

That remains true now. Even when the the prestigious contest is on the line, and even if the team have ultimately accepted that they need to be a somewhat adaptable in the way they approach competing. Daily routines has a way of intruding, it can be hard to retain the knowledge we acquire in our most difficult periods.

Presented is the national side that secured successive fourth-innings chases of three challenging targets in one summer against the Kiwis; that made 378 to overcome the Indian team that same summer; that became the pioneering away squad to win a clean sweep in the host nation; that fought back to a stalemate after going 2-0 down in the the contest; that defeated the Indian team in the southern city off the back of one of the finest batting displays ever played in the the region, and then defeated the Pakistani team in Multan off the back of a further exceptional performance.

It is the English squad, too, that managed to end up suffering a defeat in a Test by an innings defeat even though the rivals made only 326; who ended up being defeated in one of the more exciting matches ever contested after making a confident decision in the opening session against New Zealand, and then repeated the action against the Australian team; who were thrashed by a huge margin in the venue, and who were on the losing side of one of the Sri Lankan team's greatest victories. Between them, they have achieved some of the surprising successes, endured some of the ugliest dismissals, made some of the most improbable tons, and secured some of the most startling five-fers in the records of the national sport.

Regardless of how this Ashes series concludes, they have been, one after another, astonishing, preposterous, ridiculous, infuriating, and entirely, unapologetically, unashamedly thrilling.