Stokes' England have shown the world that cricket is meant to be entertainment.

People rarely mention the last ball of the Ashes. That initial ball that's legendary. That errant delivery that flies to slip, that beautiful stroke for four, that wicket, clean bowled! Concluding moments? I needed to check. Moeen Ali slicing a drive behind to finish an innings defeat in a inconsequential game 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 30-over collapse in a 5-0 whitewash that's been commonplace in 2014; a Harmison bouncer deflecting off Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the single four the Australian team manage in a run chase they'll never get to make in 2005.

It distinguishes between wondering how things will go, and understanding how they do. One undeniable fact, there's no assurance there will be a happy ending. For the last decade, the English visits to Australia have concluded in failure, instead of with them. Andy Flower was dismissed as head coach after an embarrassing rout, in 2013-14, Silverwood was let go after a further defeat, in 2021-22. One could assemble a two lineups out of national team members who featured in their final Test match at the tail end of an Australian tour during the last quarter-century, and additionally have a few players over to serve as reserves for each squad.

Stokes' squad have not professed to be overly concerned about consequences. Ben Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the ODI squad before him, always says that regardless of whether a aerial shot is caught on the boundary is secondary as if it was the right decision to play it in the beginning, and while fielding he's quick to praise a bowler who gives away boundaries so long as they help bring the team closer to taking that next wicket. But then the key rationale Stokes tried to instruct his squad to adopt this approach was so they would be in a more advantageous state to deliver the brand of the game he feels will succeed for them in Australia.

The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been training rigorously, already appears as the conclusion they cannot escape. It is this aggressive approach's decisive moment. And there are numerous warnings of defeat in the English game for the team to escape criticism if they do suffer another disappointing result in the upcoming period. His methodology has been predicated on defying expectations, and the counterpart is it feels as if there are plenty of people who would be pleased to be validated.

Given that, it's a good moment to highlight that the key issue isn't just where this concludes, but regardless of whether we had fun along the way. A few years back, England were an completely dismal cricket team. They had been beaten in four straight contests and were falling behind in the final one, against India, when it was postponed because of the pandemic. They had won a single Test match out of 17, and lost twelve of them by large defeats. A loss by eight wickets to the Black Caps at the Birmingham ground, A 157-run loss to the subcontinent team at the the London ground, an innings and 14 runs to the Australians at the MCG, A ten-wicket loss to the Caribbean side in the island nation.

The team was soundly beaten by the Windies in Grenada in the early part of 2022 just before Joe Root stepped down as leader.

By the conclusion, after all those stretches of nasal swabs and social distancing and restricted environments and constant defeats at the hands of each rival, they were practically the most miserable and exhausted Test team England had ever fielded to a cricket field. A great deal of what Ben Stokes and McCullum have accomplished in the subsequent years was in a consequence of all that, as well as the Stokes' personal encounters during his hiatus from the game in 2021 when he had suffered a series of panic attacks. It was intended to emphasize to all that it was meant to be enjoyable, if it was supposed to be something.

It still is now. Despite when the Ashes is on the line, and even if the team have finally recognized that they need to be a slightly versatile in the way they go about playing the game. Normal existence has a way of crowding in, it can be challenging to remember the lessons we learn in our most difficult periods.

Presented is the England team that peeled off consecutive fourth-innings chases of significant totals in one season against the Black Caps; that made a massive 378 to beat India that same summer; that became the pioneering away squad to win a clean sweep in the subcontinent country; that battled hard to a stalemate after going 2-0 down 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 subcontinent, and then beat the Pakistani team in Multan off the back of a subsequent one.

This is the national side, too, that unexpectedly end up losing a Test by an innings defeat even though the rivals made a modest 326; who fetched up losing one of the more exciting matches ever contested after making a confident decision in the initial batting effort against the Kiwis, and then followed suit against the Aussies; who were routed by a massive 434 runs in the venue, and who were on the wrong end of one of the island nation's most notable triumphs. Collectively, they have secured some of the unlikeliest wins, suffered some of the most embarrassing exits, scored some of the unlikeliest centuries, and secured some of the most remarkable five-wicket hauls in the records of the national sport.

No matter how this prestigious tournament concludes, they have been, successively, astonishing, preposterous, absurd, infuriating, and entirely, unapologetically, boldly enjoyable.