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Nobody talks about the concluding moment of the Ashes. That initial ball that's legendary. That stray ball that goes to the slips, that elegant shot for four, that fallen stump, shattering the stumps! Last balls? I had to research them. Moeen Ali slicing a drive behind to finish an innings defeat in a meaningless match in 2015; Rankin being taken at slip off Ryan Harris, Rankin participating in his one and only Test at the tail-end of a rapid downfall in a 5-0 whitewash that's been plentiful in 2014; a Harmison short ball glancing off Langer's shoulder for extras, the sole boundary the Australian team achieve in a pursuit they'll not undertake in 2005.

It separates between wondering how things will go, and knowing how they do. One certainty is, there's no guarantee there will be a successful conclusion. For the previous decade, the English visits to Australia have finished in defeat, as opposed to with them. Andy Flower was dismissed as head coach after a crushing loss, in 2013-14, Silverwood was sacked after another, in 2021-22. One could assemble a two lineups out of English cricketers who played their last Test match at the tail end of an tour to Australia during the previous 25 years, and still have a couple of men over to serve as reserves for each squad.

Stokes' squad have not professed to worry excessively about results. Stokes, like Morgan with the limited-overs team before him, frequently remarks that if a lifted stroke is grabbed near the fence is secondary as if it was the right decision to execute it in the first place, and while fielding he's happy to clap a delivery man who concedes runs so long as they help bring the team toward taking that next wicket. But then the very reason Ben Stokes tried to guide his players to play this way was so they would be in a superior situation to produce the style of play he thinks will perform effectively for them in Australia.

The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been training rigorously, already seems like the conclusion they cannot escape. It is Bazball's decisive moment. And there are numerous “I told you so’s” in the English game for the team to escape criticism if they do experience another poor loss in the coming weeks. Stokes's approach has been based on defying expectations, and the flipside is it feels as if there are numerous observers who would be pleased to be proven correct.

In light of this, it's a good moment to point out that the key issue isn't just where this concludes, but regardless of whether we enjoyed it along the way. In the recent past, England were an utterly abject cricket team. They had been defeated in a quartet of successive tournaments and were falling behind in the fifth one, against India, when it was postponed because of the virus. They had won exactly one Test match out of a series of 17, and lost 12 of them by embarrassing margins. Eight wickets to the Kiwis at the historic venue, A 157-run loss to the subcontinent team at the the famous stadium, an innings and 14 runs to the Aussie team at Melbourne, A ten-wicket loss to the Windies in Grenada.

The team was soundly beaten by the Windies in the island in spring 2022 just before Joe Root resigned as skipper.

By the final stage, after all those stretches of testing and social distancing and restricted environments and endless beatings at the hands of each rival, they were just about the most dejected and careworn Test team the English cricket board had ever sent out to a cricket field. A great deal of what Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum have done in the years since was in reaction to all that, as well as the former's individual trials during his time away from the game in 2021 when he had suffered a series of panic attacks. It was designed to emphasize to all that it was intended as entertaining, if it was intended as anything.

This continues to be the case now. Despite when the the historic series is on the line, and regardless if the team have eventually come to agree that they need to be a slightly versatile in the way they tackle competing. Daily routines has a way of imposing, it can be hard to hold on to the lessons we learn in our lowest moments.

This is the national side that achieved consecutive fourth-innings chases of three challenging targets in one summer against New Zealand; that scored a huge total to beat India that corresponding period; that became the pioneering away squad to win a whitewash in Pakistan; that showed resilience to a tie after going two games behind in the Ashes; that beat the Indian team in Hyderabad off the back of one of the most remarkable knocks ever executed in the the area, and then beat Pakistan in the city off the back of a further exceptional performance.

Here we have the national side, too, that unexpectedly end up losing a Test by an large margin even though the rivals made a modest 326; who ended up losing one of the finer contests ever contested after making a bold declaration in the opening session against the Black Caps, and then repeated the action against the Aussies; who were soundly beaten by a huge margin in the venue, and who were on the wrong end of one of the Sri Lankan team's most notable triumphs. Between them, they have achieved some of the surprising successes, experienced some of the ugliest dismissals, achieved some of the surprising centuries, and secured some of the most remarkable five-fers in the annals of the English game.

Regardless of how this Ashes series concludes, they have been, successively, astonishing, outrageous, ridiculous, exasperating, and entirely, without regret, unapologetically thrilling.