Ben Stokes' team have demonstrated everyone that the sport of cricket is all about enjoyment.
People rarely mention the final delivery of the Ashes. That initial ball that's famous. That wide that flies to slip, that elegant shot for four, that wicket, clean bowled! Last balls? I needed to check. Ali slicing a drive behind to conclude a batting effort rout in a dead rubber in 2015; Boyd Rankin being caught in the slips off Harris, Rankin playing in his single Test at the tail-end of a 30-over collapse in a 5-0 whitewash that's been plentiful in 2014; a Steve Harmison rising delivery deflecting off Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the single four the Aussies achieve in a pursuit they'll not attempt in 2005.
It's the difference between speculating how things will go, and seeing how they do. One undeniable fact, there's no assurance there will be a successful conclusion. For the previous decade, England's visits to Australia have finished in defeat, rather than with them. Andy Flower was removed as manager after a crushing loss, in 2013-14, Silverwood was sacked after another, in 2021-22. You can make a couple of teams out of English cricketers who participated in their concluding Test match at the conclusion of an tour to Australia during the previous 25 years, and additionally have a couple of men over to serve as reserves for either side.
The current English side have not professed to be overly concerned about consequences. Stokes, like Morgan with the ODI squad before him, frequently remarks that if a lifted stroke is grabbed near the fence is secondary as whether it was the right decision to execute it in the beginning, and while fielding he's pleased to applaud a bowler who allows scoring shots so long as they bringing the team toward taking that next wicket. But then the very reason Ben Stokes tried to guide his players to adopt this approach was so they would be in a better position to produce the style of play he thinks will succeed for them in Australia.
The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been training rigorously, already seems like the outcome they cannot escape. It is Bazball's make or break moment. And there are too many warnings of defeat in the English game for the team to get away with it if they do endure a further poor loss in the coming weeks. His methodology has been based on challenging skeptics, and the other side is it seems that there are numerous observers who would be pleased to be shown right.
In light of this, it's a good moment to emphasize that the crucial matter is not only where this concludes, but if we enjoyed it along the way. Four years ago, the English team were an thoroughly poor sports team. They had been beaten in four consecutive series and were falling behind in the fifth, against the Indian team, when it was postponed because of the pandemic. They had won exactly one Test match out of a series of 17, and lost twelve of them by embarrassing margins. Eight wickets to the Kiwis at Edgbaston, A 157-run loss to the Indian squad at the the London ground, an innings and 14 runs to the Australians at Melbourne, A defeat by ten wickets to the Windies in the island nation.
The English side was routed by the Caribbean team in the island in the early part of 2022 just before Joe Root stepped down as leader.
By the end, after all those stretches of testing and social distancing and biosecure bubbles and endless beatings at the hands of each rival, they were virtually the most miserable and weary Test team the English cricket board had ever fielded to a playing arena. A significant portion of what Stokes and Brendon McCullum have done in the years since was in response to all that, as well as the Stokes' experiences 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 intended as enjoyable, if it was intended as anything.
That remains true now. Despite when the the historic series is on the line, and even if the team have eventually come to agree that they need to be a somewhat adaptable in the way they go about competing. Normal existence has a way of crowding in, it can be difficult to retain the lessons we learn in our most difficult periods.
This is the England team that peeled off consecutive final innings pursuits of three challenging targets in one summer against the Kiwis; that scored a huge total to overcome India that corresponding period; that became the initial visiting side 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 beat the Indian team in the southern city off the back of one of the most remarkable knocks ever executed in the subcontinent, and then beat the Pakistani team in Multan off the back of a further exceptional performance.
It is the England team, too, that somehow end up suffering a defeat in a Test by an innings even though the other team made a modest 326; who concluded being defeated in one of the better Tests ever staged after making a bold declaration in the first innings against the Kiwis, and then followed suit against Australia; who were thrashed by 434 runs in the venue, and who were on the losing side of one of the Sri Lankan team's most notable triumphs. Between them, they have recorded some of the unlikeliest wins, endured some of the most embarrassing exits, made some of the surprising centuries, and secured some of the most remarkable exceptional bowling spells in the history of the national sport.
However this Ashes series concludes, they have been, one after another, incredible, preposterous, unconventional, infuriating, and completely, unapologetically, boldly entertaining.