England under Stokes have reminded the world that this great game is all about fun.

Few recall the last ball of the Ashes. It's the first that's renowned. That wide that reaches the slip cordon, that elegant shot for four, that dismissal, bowled him! Final deliveries? I needed to check. Ali edging a shot behind to finish an innings rout in a dead rubber in 2015; Rankin being caught in the slips off Ryan Harris, Rankin featuring in his single Test at the tail-end of a quick disintegration in a comprehensive defeat that's been plentiful in 2014; a Steve Harmison rising delivery glancing off Langer's shoulder for extras, the single four the Australian team achieve in a target they'll not attempt in 2005.

It separates between questioning how things will go, and understanding how they do. One certainty is, there's no certainty there will be a successful conclusion. For the past ten years, the English visits to Australia have finished in defeat, instead of with them. Andy Flower was dismissed as head coach after one humiliating defeat, in 2013-14, Silverwood lost his after a subsequent one, in 2021-22. One could assemble a couple of teams out of English cricketers who participated in their concluding Test match at the back end of an trip Down Under during the past 25 years, and still have a several individuals over to serve as reserves for either side.

This England team have not asserted to worry excessively about results. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the ODI squad before him, always says that regardless of whether a aerial shot is caught on the boundary isn't as important as if it was the proper call to play it in the beginning, and while fielding he's happy to clap a delivery man who allows scoring shots so long as they help bring the team nearer to taking that following breakthrough. But then the key rationale Ben Stokes tried to instruct his squad to follow this style was so they would be in a better position to produce the brand of the game he feels will do well for them in Australia.

This Ashes series, for which they have been preparing for so long, already feels like the outcome they are bound to face. It is this bold strategy's make or break moment. And there are too many warnings of defeat in the English game for the team to avoid backlash if they do experience another bad defeat in the next few weeks. His methodology has been predicated on defying expectations, and the other side is it seems that there are many individuals who would be delighted to be shown right.

Given that, it's a good moment to emphasize that the important question isn't just where this ultimately leads, but if we enjoyed it along the way. In the recent past, England were an utterly abject cricket team. They had been beaten in four straight contests and were trailing in the final one, against the Indian team, when it was postponed because of Covid. They had won a single Test match out of a series of 17, and lost a dozen of them by large defeats. An eight-wicket defeat to New Zealand at Edgbaston, A defeat by 157 runs to the subcontinent team at the Oval, an an innings defeat to the Australians at the iconic ground, A defeat by ten wickets to the Caribbean side in the island nation.

The team was soundly beaten by the Windies in the venue in the early part of 2022 just before Root stepped aside as skipper.

By the final stage, after all those periods of testing and isolation and controlled settings and constant defeats at the hands of all opponents, they were virtually the most dejected and careworn Test team the English cricket board had ever sent out to a sports ground. A great deal of what Stokes and Brendon McCullum have accomplished in the subsequent years was in response to all that, as well as the Stokes' individual trials during his time away from the game in 2021 when he had endured a series of panic attacks. It was created to emphasize to all that it was supposed to be fun, if it was meant to be anything.

It still is now. Although the the historic series is on the line, and regardless if the team have ultimately accepted that they need to be a little more flexible in the way they go about playing the game. Normal existence has a way of imposing, it can be challenging to hold on to the insights we gain in our most difficult periods.

This is the England team that achieved successive fourth-innings chases of 277, 299, and 296 in one period against the Kiwis; that made a huge total to beat the Indian team that same summer; that became the pioneering away squad to win a whitewash in the host nation; that fought back to a tie after going trailing by two matches in the the series; that overcame India in Hyderabad off the back of one of the most remarkable knocks ever played in the the area, and then defeated Pakistan in Multan off the back of a subsequent one.

It is the English squad, too, that unexpectedly end up being defeated in a Test by an innings defeat even though the opposition made a modest 326; who concluded being defeated in one of the more exciting matches ever staged after making a cocksure declaration in the first innings against the Kiwis, and then repeated the action against the Australian team; who were thrashed by a huge margin in the venue, and who were on the wrong end of one of the island nation's most notable triumphs. As a unit, they have secured some of the unlikeliest wins, experienced some of the poorest performances, achieved some of the unlikeliest hundreds, and achieved some of the most remarkable five-wicket hauls in the history of the national sport.

No matter how this Ashes series unfolds, they have been, in turn, astonishing, outrageous, absurd, frustrating, and entirely, unapologetically, unapologetically enjoyable.