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Few recall the concluding moment of the Ashes. It's the first that's famous. That errant delivery that reaches the slip cordon, that beautiful stroke for four, that dismissal, clean bowled! Final deliveries? I had to look them up. Ali slicing a drive behind to finish an innings rout in a inconsequential game in 2015; Rankin being taken at slip off Ryan Harris, Rankin participating in his one and only Test at the conclusion of a rapid downfall in a clean sweep that's been plentiful in 2014; a Harmison bouncer ricocheting away Justin Langer's shoulder for extras, the only four the Aussies achieve in a run chase 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 assurance there will be a positive outcome. For the last decade, the English Australian tours have concluded in failure, as opposed to with them. Andy Flower was dismissed as head coach after an embarrassing rout, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood was sacked after a further defeat, in 2021-22. You can make a couple of teams out of England players who participated in their concluding Test match at the back end of an Australian tour during the past 25 years, and additionally have a several individuals over to carry the drinks for each squad.

The current English side have never claimed to care too much about outcomes. Stokes, like Morgan with the one-day side before him, always says that regardless of whether a aerial shot is grabbed near the fence is secondary as whether it was the correct choice to play it in the first place, and during play he's quick to praise a bowler who concedes runs so long as they are bringing the team toward taking that next wicket. But then the key rationale Stokes tried to guide his players to adopt this approach was so they would be in a more advantageous state to deliver the kind of cricket he believes will perform effectively for them in Australia.

The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been training rigorously, already appears as the result they cannot escape. It is this aggressive approach's make or break 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 poor loss in the coming weeks. Stokes's approach has been predicated on proving everyone wrong, and the flipside is it appears there are plenty of people who would be thrilled to be validated.

Given that, it's a good moment to highlight that the crucial matter is not only where this all ends up, but regardless of whether we found pleasure along the way. Four years ago, the English team were an completely dismal national side. They had been overcome in a quartet of successive tournaments and were lagging in the fifth one, against India, when it was postponed because of Covid. They had won only one Test match out of seventeen, and lost a dozen of them by large defeats. An eight-wicket defeat to the Kiwis at Edgbaston, 157 runs to the subcontinent team at the Oval, an innings and 14 runs to the Aussie team at the iconic ground, 10 wickets to the Windies in the scenic location.

England were thrashed by the Windies in the venue in March 2022 just before Root resigned as skipper.

By the final stage, after all those months of testing and social distancing and biosecure bubbles and repeated losses at the hands of each rival, they were practically the most miserable and exhausted Test team England had ever put on to a playing arena. A great deal of what Stokes and Brendon McCullum have done in the years since was in reaction to all that, as well as the former's personal encounters during his five-month break from the game in 2021 when he had endured a bout of anxiety. It was designed to remind everyone that it was intended as enjoyable, if it was meant to be anything.

It still is now. Although the the prestigious contest is on the line, and although the team have eventually come to agree that they need to be a little more flexible in the way they approach playing the game. Normal existence has a way of imposing, it can be hard to retain the knowledge we acquire in our lowest moments.

This is the England team that peeled off back-to-back fourth-innings chases of significant totals in one season against New Zealand; that scored a huge total to overcome the Indian team that same summer; that became the first touring team to win a clean sweep in the subcontinent country; that battled hard to a tie after going 2-0 down in the Ashes; that beat India in the historic venue off the back of one of the greatest innings ever performed in the subcontinent, and then beat Pakistan in Multan off the back of a further exceptional performance.

Here we have the English squad, too, that managed to end up losing a Test by an innings defeat even though the rivals made only 326; who fetched up suffering a loss in one of the more exciting matches ever played after making a confident decision in the initial batting effort against the Black Caps, and then repeated the action against Australia; who were thrashed by a huge margin in Rajkot, and who were on the losing side of one of the island nation's most notable triumphs. As a unit, they have achieved some of the unlikeliest wins, suffered some of the ugliest dismissals, scored some of the unlikeliest hundreds, and taken some of the most startling five-wicket hauls in the records of the national sport.

No matter how this historic contest unfolds, they have been, one after another, astonishing, unbelievable, absurd, exasperating, and completely, unapologetically, unashamedly thrilling.