Ben Stokes' team have shown everyone that the sport of cricket is all about entertainment.

Few recall the last ball of the Ashes. That initial ball that's famous. That stray ball that goes to the slips, that cover drive for four, that fallen stump, bowled him! Final deliveries? I had to research them. Ali cutting a stroke behind to conclude a batting effort defeat in a dead rubber in 2015; Boyd Rankin being taken at slip off Harris, Boyd Rankin participating in his sole Test at the conclusion of a rapid downfall in a 5-0 whitewash that's been plentiful in 2014; a Steve Harmison short ball ricocheting away Langer's shoulder for extras, the single four Australia score in a target they'll not attempt in 2005.

It separates between speculating how things will go, and knowing how they do. One thing's certain, there's no guarantee there will be a happy ending. For the past ten years, England's visits to Australia have concluded in failure, as opposed to with them. Flower lost his job as coach after an embarrassing rout, in 2013-14, Silverwood was sacked after another, in 2021-22. One could assemble a pair of XIs out of national team members who played their last Test match at the conclusion of an tour to Australia during the last quarter-century, and additionally have a couple of men over to act as substitutes for both teams.

The current English side have not professed to worry excessively about consequences. Ben Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the ODI squad before him, frequently remarks that whether or not a lofted drive is grabbed near the fence is secondary as whether or not it was the correct choice to execute it in the first place, and during play he's quick to praise a pitcher who allows scoring shots so long as they are bringing the team toward taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the primary motive Stokes tried to guide his players to play this way was so they would be in a more advantageous state to execute the style of play he feels will perform effectively for them in Australia.

The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been planning extensively, already appears as the result they are bound to face. It is this aggressive approach's make or break moment. And there are numerous predictions of failure in the national sport for the team to avoid backlash if they do endure a further bad defeat in the upcoming period. The captain's strategy has been predicated on defying expectations, and the counterpart is it feels as if there are numerous observers who would be delighted to be shown right.

Considering this, it's a good moment to highlight that the key issue isn't just where this all ends up, but if we found pleasure along the way. In the recent past, England were an completely dismal national side. They had been overcome in a quartet of successive tournaments and were trailing in the fifth one, against the Indian team, when it was suspended because of the pandemic. They had won a single Test match out of seventeen, and lost 12 of them by large defeats. An eight-wicket defeat to New Zealand at the historic venue, A defeat by 157 runs to the subcontinent team at the Oval, an a comprehensive loss to the Australians at Melbourne, A defeat by ten wickets to the Caribbean side in Grenada.

England were thrashed by West Indies in Grenada in spring 2022 just before Root stepped down as leader.

By the final stage, after all those stretches of health protocols and isolation and controlled settings and endless beatings at the hands of everyone they played, they were practically the most disheartened and weary Test team the English cricket board had ever sent out to a sports ground. A great deal of what Stokes and McCullum have achieved in the subsequent years was in reaction to all that, as well as the former's individual trials during his five-month break from the game in 2021 when he had experienced a period of mental health challenges. It was created to emphasize to all that it was supposed to be enjoyable, if it was supposed to be anything at all.

That remains true now. Although the the prestigious contest is on the line, and even if the team have finally recognized that they need to be a slightly versatile in the way they approach competing. Normal existence has a way of intruding, it can be challenging to remember the lessons we learn in our lowest moments.

Presented is the English squad that achieved successive final innings pursuits of 277, 299, and 296 in one summer against the Black Caps; that made a huge total to defeat India that identical season; that became the first touring team to win a comprehensive victory in Pakistan; that battled hard to a draw after going two games behind in the Ashes; that defeated the Indian team in the historic venue off the back of one of the finest batting displays ever executed in the subcontinent, and then beat the Pakistani team in the location off the back of another.

It is the English squad, too, that managed to end up being defeated in a Test by an innings defeat even though the rivals made a relatively low total; who concluded losing one of the more exciting matches ever played after making a confident decision in the opening session against New Zealand, and then did the same thing against Australia; who were routed by a massive 434 runs in the Indian city, and who were on the wrong end of one of the island nation's finest wins. Between them, they have recorded some of the unlikeliest wins, suffered some of the poorest performances, made some of the unlikeliest tons, and taken some of the most remarkable exceptional bowling spells in the history of English cricket.

Regardless of how this historic contest unfolds, they have been, one after another, astonishing, preposterous, unconventional, exasperating, and completely, unrepentantly, unapologetically entertaining.