Ben Stokes' team have reminded everyone that this great game is supposed to be enjoyment.

People rarely mention the final delivery of the Ashes. It's the first that's legendary. That wide that reaches the slip cordon, that cover drive for four, that wicket, shattering the stumps! Concluding moments? I had to look them up. Ali cutting a stroke behind to finish an innings rout in a inconsequential game in 2015; Rankin being grabbed by the slip fielder off Ryan Harris, Boyd Rankin participating in his one and only Test at the conclusion of a rapid downfall in a clean sweep that's been plentiful in 2014; a Harmison rising delivery ricocheting away Justin Langer's shoulder for runs, the sole boundary the Aussies achieve in a pursuit they'll never get to make in 2005.

It distinguishes between speculating how things will go, and seeing how they do. One certainty is, there's no guarantee there will be a positive outcome. For the previous decade, England's Australian tours have finished in defeat, as opposed to with them. Andy Flower was removed as manager after an embarrassing rout, in 2013-14, Silverwood lost his after a subsequent one, in 2021-22. It's possible to form a pair of XIs out of national team members who played their last Test match at the back end of an trip Down Under during the previous 25 years, and still have a few players over to serve as reserves for either side.

Stokes' squad have not professed to worry excessively about results. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the limited-overs team before him, always says that whether or not a lifted stroke is grabbed near the fence is secondary as if it was the correct choice to attempt it in the first place, and during play he's quick to praise a bowler who gives away boundaries so long as they are bringing the team toward taking that next wicket. But then the key rationale Stokes tried to instruct his squad to play this way was so they would be in a more advantageous state to produce the brand of the game he thinks will succeed for them in Australia.

The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been preparing for so long, already feels like the conclusion they cannot escape. It is Bazball's critical moment. And there are too many “I told you so’s” in the English game for the team to get away with it if they do endure a further disappointing result in the upcoming period. The captain's strategy has been predicated on defying expectations, and the other side is it feels as if there are plenty of people who would be thrilled to be shown right.

Given that, it's a good moment to point out that the important question isn't just where this ultimately leads, but regardless of whether we had fun along the way. A few years back, the English team were an utterly abject sports team. They had been beaten in four consecutive series and were falling behind in the final one, against India, when it was halted because of Covid. They had won exactly one Test match out of 17, and lost twelve of them by large defeats. Eight wickets to the Black Caps at the Birmingham ground, A defeat by 157 runs to the Indian squad at the Oval, an innings and 14 runs to the Aussie team at the MCG, A defeat by ten wickets to the Windies in Grenada.

England were thrashed by the Windies in the venue in spring 2022 just before Root resigned as captain.

By the conclusion, after all those months of testing and isolation and controlled settings and constant defeats at the hands of everyone they played, they were practically the most dejected and careworn Test team England had ever put on to a cricket field. A great deal of what Stokes and Brendon McCullum have achieved in the years since was in response to all that, as well as the Stokes' personal encounters during his hiatus from the game in 2021 when he had suffered a period of mental health challenges. It was intended to remind everyone that it was meant to be fun, if it was meant to be anything.

This continues to be the case now. Even when the Ashes is on the line, and even if the team have finally recognized that they need to be a little more flexible in the way they go about competing. Daily routines has a way of imposing, it can be challenging to remember the knowledge we acquire in our toughest times.

This is the England team that achieved consecutive final innings pursuits of 277, 299, and 296 in one summer against the Black Caps; that achieved a huge total to beat the Indian team that corresponding period; that became the initial visiting side to win a whitewash in the host nation; that showed resilience to a stalemate after going trailing by two matches in the Ashes; that beat India in Hyderabad off the back of one of the finest batting displays ever performed in the the region, and then overcame Pakistan in the location off the back of a further exceptional performance.

It is the England team, 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 ended up losing one of the more exciting matches ever contested after making a cocksure declaration in the first innings against New Zealand, and then followed suit against the Australian team; who were soundly beaten by a huge margin in the venue, and who were on the wrong end of one of the island nation's greatest victories. As a unit, they have recorded some of the surprising successes, experienced some of the most embarrassing exits, achieved some of the surprising tons, and achieved some of the most surprising five-fers in the annals of the national sport.

No matter how this historic contest shakes out, they have been, one after another, incredible, outrageous, ridiculous, exasperating, and totally, unrepentantly, unapologetically thrilling.