Ben Stokes' team have reminded us all that this great game is all about fun.

Nobody talks about the last ball of the Ashes. The opening delivery that's famous. That wide that reaches the slip cordon, that cover drive for four, that dismissal, bowled him! Final deliveries? I had to look them up. Moeen Ali edging a shot behind to conclude a batting effort defeat in a inconsequential game in 2015; Rankin being grabbed by the slip fielder off Ryan Harris, Boyd Rankin playing in his one and only Test at the fag-end of a 30-over collapse in a 5-0 whitewash that's been full of them in 2014; a Harmison bouncer glancing off Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the sole boundary Australia manage in a pursuit they'll never get to make in 2005.

It separates between wondering how things will go, and seeing how they do. One undeniable fact, there's no assurance there will be a happy ending. For the last decade, the English Australian tours have ended in ashes, as opposed to with them. Andy Flower was dismissed as coach after one humiliating defeat, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood lost his after another, in 2021-22. You can make a two lineups out of English cricketers who participated in their concluding Test match at the back end of an tour to Australia during the last quarter-century, and additionally have a few players over to act as substitutes for both teams.

The current English side have not asserted to be overly concerned about consequences. Stokes, like Morgan with the one-day side before him, frequently remarks that regardless of whether a aerial shot is grabbed near the fence isn't as important as if it was the right decision to play it in the beginning, and in the field he's happy to clap a pitcher who gives away boundaries so long as they help bring the team nearer to taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the primary motive Stokes tried to teach his team to play this way was so they would be in a better position to execute the brand of the game he believes will perform effectively for them in Australia.

The forthcoming contest, for which they have been planning extensively, already seems like the result they cannot escape. It is Bazball's decisive moment. And there are too many “I told you so’s” in the English game for the team to avoid backlash if they do endure a further poor loss in the upcoming period. Stokes's approach has been founded on challenging skeptics, and the counterpart is it seems that there are numerous observers who would be thrilled to be shown right.

In light of this, it's a appropriate time to point out that the key issue isn't just where this ultimately leads, but if we enjoyed it along the way. A few years back, the English team were an completely dismal national side. They had been overcome in four straight contests and were falling behind in the fifth, against India, when it was halted because of the pandemic. They had won a single Test match out of seventeen, and lost a dozen of them by humiliating deficits. An eight-wicket defeat to New Zealand at Edgbaston, A defeat by 157 runs to the Indian squad at the Oval, an an innings defeat to the Aussie team at the MCG, 10 wickets to the Windies in Grenada.

England were thrashed by the Windies in Grenada in spring 2022 just before Root stepped down as captain.

By the end, after all those stretches of health protocols and preventive measures and restricted environments and endless beatings at the hands of everyone they played, they were virtually the most miserable and careworn Test team the English cricket board had ever sent out to a cricket field. A significant portion of what Stokes and McCullum have accomplished in the following period was in response 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 period of mental health challenges. It was designed to emphasize to all that it was meant to be fun, if it was supposed to be anything.

This continues to be the case now. Even when the Ashes 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 performing. Daily routines has a way of imposing, it can be challenging to hold on to the insights we gain in our most difficult periods.

Here is the England team that achieved consecutive fourth-innings chases of three challenging targets in one summer against New Zealand; that scored a massive 378 to defeat India that corresponding period; that became the first touring team to win a clean sweep in Pakistan; that battled hard to a tie after going 2-0 down in the the series; that beat India in the historic venue off the back of one of the greatest innings ever performed in the the area, and then beat Pakistan in Multan off the back of a further exceptional performance.

It is the English squad, too, that managed to end up suffering a defeat in a Test by an large margin even though the opposition made a relatively low total; who ended up losing one of the more exciting matches ever contested after making a bold declaration in the first innings against the Kiwis, and then followed suit against the Australian team; who were routed by 434 runs in the venue, and who were on the wrong end of one of the Sri Lankan team's finest wins. As a unit, they have recorded some of the unlikeliest wins, experienced some of the most embarrassing exits, achieved some of the surprising hundreds, and taken some of the most remarkable exceptional bowling spells in the records of the English game.

Regardless of how this Ashes series concludes, they have been, successively, astonishing, preposterous, absurd, frustrating, and entirely, unrepentantly, unashamedly entertaining.