Ben Stokes' team have shown everyone that the sport of cricket is supposed to be entertainment.

Few recall the final delivery of the Ashes. It's the first that's renowned. That wide that flies to slip, that cover drive for four, that dismissal, bowled him! Final deliveries? I had to look them up. Moeen Ali cutting a stroke behind to conclude a batting effort loss in a dead rubber in 2015; Rankin being caught in the slips off Harris, Rankin featuring in his sole Test at the tail-end of a quick disintegration in a comprehensive defeat that's been commonplace in 2014; a Harmison short ball deflecting off Justin Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the only four Australia achieve in a pursuit they'll never get to make in 2005.

It's the difference between speculating how things will go, and knowing how they do. One thing's certain, there's no assurance there will be a positive outcome. For the past ten years, the English visits to Australia have finished in defeat, rather than with them. Flower was removed as coach after a crushing loss, in 2013-14, Silverwood lost his after a further defeat, in 2021-22. It's possible to form a pair of XIs out of English cricketers who played their last Test match at the back end of an tour to Australia during the past 25 years, and even have a couple of men over to act as substitutes for each squad.

The current English side have never claimed to worry excessively about results. Ben Stokes, like Morgan with the one-day side before him, always says that regardless of whether a lifted stroke is taken at the rope matters less as if it was the correct choice to execute it in the first place, and while fielding he's happy to clap a bowler who allows scoring shots so long as they help bring the team toward taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the key rationale Ben Stokes tried to instruct his squad to follow this style was so they would be in a more advantageous state to produce the brand of the game he believes will perform effectively for them in Australia.

The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been training rigorously, already feels like the conclusion they are bound to face. It is this bold strategy's decisive moment. And there are numerous predictions of failure in English cricket for the team to avoid backlash if they do suffer another bad defeat in the upcoming period. His methodology has been founded on proving everyone wrong, and the other side is it appears there are many individuals who would be pleased to be validated.

Considering this, it's a good moment to highlight that the crucial matter is not only where this concludes, but regardless of whether we found pleasure along the way. Four years ago, England were an completely dismal cricket team. They had been defeated in a quartet of successive tournaments and were trailing in the fifth, against India, when it was postponed because of Covid. They had won a single Test match out of seventeen, and lost twelve of them by humiliating deficits. An eight-wicket defeat to the Black Caps at Edgbaston, 157 runs to the subcontinent team at the the London ground, an innings and 14 runs to the Australians at the iconic ground, 10 wickets to West Indies in the scenic location.

The team was soundly beaten by the Windies in the island in spring 2022 just before Root stepped aside as leader.

By the end, after all those months of health protocols and preventive measures and biosecure bubbles and constant defeats at the hands of each rival, they were practically the most miserable and weary Test team the English cricket board had ever put on to a cricket field. A great deal of what Stokes and Brendon McCullum have done in the years since was in reaction to all that, as well as the Stokes' experiences during his five-month break from the game in 2021 when he had suffered a series of panic attacks. It was intended to make people recall that it was supposed to be enjoyable, if it was meant to be anything at all.

That remains true now. Even when the Ashes is on the line, and even if the team have ultimately accepted that they need to be a little more flexible in the way they go about competing. Normal existence has a way of crowding in, it can be hard to hold on to the insights we gain in our lowest moments.

This is the England team that secured back-to-back run 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 initial visiting side to win a clean sweep in the subcontinent country; that showed resilience to a stalemate after going 2-0 down in the the contest; that defeated India in the southern city off the back of one of the finest batting displays ever executed in the subcontinent, and then overcame Pakistan in the city off the back of another.

Here we have the national side, too, that somehow end up being defeated in a Test by an large margin even though the opposition made a relatively low total; who ended up being defeated in one of the better Tests ever staged after making a cocksure declaration in the initial batting effort against New Zealand, and then followed suit against Australia; who were routed by 434 runs in the Indian city, and who were on the wrong end of one of the Sri Lankan team's most notable triumphs. Collectively, they have recorded some of the unlikeliest wins, experienced some of the ugliest dismissals, scored some of the surprising centuries, and achieved some of the most startling five-fers in the history of the national sport.

However this prestigious tournament unfolds, they have been, one after another, amazing, preposterous, absurd, exasperating, and totally, unapologetically, unashamedly entertaining.