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Few recall the concluding moment of the Ashes. That initial ball that's legendary. That stray ball that flies to slip, that cover drive for four, that fallen stump, bowled him! Final deliveries? I had to research them. Moeen Ali edging a shot behind to conclude a batting effort rout in a dead rubber in 2015; Rankin being grabbed by the slip fielder off Ryan Harris, Rankin featuring in his one and only Test at the fag-end of a rapid downfall in a 5-0 whitewash that's been plentiful in 2014; a Harmison short ball ricocheting away Justin Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the sole boundary the Aussies score in a target they'll not undertake in 2005.

It's the difference between wondering how things will go, and seeing how they do. One certainty is, there's no guarantee there will be a happy ending. For the past ten years, England's Australian tours have finished in defeat, as opposed to with them. Flower was removed as coach after an embarrassing rout, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood lost his after a subsequent one, in 2021-22. It's possible to form a couple of teams out of national team members who featured in their final Test match at the back end of an tour to Australia during the previous 25 years, and additionally have a few players over to act as substitutes for both teams.

Stokes' squad have not asserted to worry excessively about outcomes. Ben Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the one-day side before him, consistently states that whether or not a lifted stroke is taken at the rope is secondary as if it was the correct choice to attempt it in the first place, and while fielding he's happy to clap a delivery man who allows scoring shots so long as they are bringing the team closer to taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the very reason Stokes tried to teach his team to follow this style was so they would be in a more advantageous state to execute the brand of the game he feels will succeed for them in Australia.

The forthcoming contest, for which they have been planning extensively, already seems like the result they can't get away from. It is this aggressive approach's make or break moment. And there are too many predictions of failure in the English game for the team to get away with it if they do suffer another disappointing result in the coming weeks. Stokes's approach has been based on proving everyone wrong, and the other side is it appears there are plenty of people who would be thrilled to be shown right.

Considering this, it's a suitable occasion to highlight that the important question isn't just where this ultimately leads, but regardless of whether we enjoyed it along the way. Four years ago, the English team were an utterly abject sports team. They had been beaten in four consecutive series and were lagging in the final one, against India, when it was suspended because of the pandemic. They had won only one Test match out of a series of 17, and lost twelve of them by large defeats. Eight wickets to the Kiwis at the Birmingham ground, A 157-run loss to the subcontinent team at the Oval, an innings and 14 runs to the Australians at the iconic ground, 10 wickets to the Windies in the scenic location.

The English side was routed by the Windies in the venue in March 2022 just before Root resigned as skipper.

By the final stage, after all those stretches of health protocols and isolation and biosecure bubbles and repeated losses at the hands of all opponents, they were just about the most miserable and exhausted Test team the English cricket board had ever put on to a cricket field. A great deal of what Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum have accomplished 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 endured a period of mental health challenges. It was created to make people recall that it was meant to be fun, if it was meant to be anything.

This continues to be the case now. Even when the the historic series is on the line, and although the team have ultimately accepted that they need to be a slightly versatile in the way they go about playing the game. Everyday life has a way of intruding, it can be challenging to retain the insights we gain in our toughest times.

This is the England team that peeled off back-to-back final innings pursuits of three challenging targets in one season against the Kiwis; that made a massive 378 to beat the Indian team that same summer; that became the pioneering away squad to win a whitewash in the subcontinent country; that battled hard to a tie after going two games behind in the the contest; that defeated the Indian team in the historic venue off the back of one of the most remarkable knocks ever played in the the area, and then overcame Pakistan in the city off the back of a further exceptional performance.

It is the England team, too, that managed to end up being defeated in a Test by an large margin even though the other team made only 326; who fetched up suffering a loss in one of the finer contests ever staged after making a cocksure declaration in the initial batting effort against the Black Caps, and then followed suit 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 Sri Lanka's most notable triumphs. Collectively, they have secured some of the surprising successes, endured some of the most embarrassing exits, made some of the unlikeliest hundreds, and secured some of the most startling exceptional bowling spells in the history of the national sport.

No matter how this historic contest shakes out, they have been, one after another, amazing, preposterous, unconventional, exasperating, and completely, unrepentantly, unashamedly thrilling.