Ben Stokes' team have reminded everyone that the sport of cricket is all about entertainment.

Few recall the last ball of the Ashes. That initial ball that's renowned. That errant delivery that goes to the slips, that beautiful stroke for four, that dismissal, shattering the stumps! 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 Harris, Boyd Rankin participating in his one and only Test at the conclusion of a rapid downfall in a comprehensive defeat that's been plentiful in 2014; a Harmison rising delivery glancing off Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the single four the Australian team achieve in a pursuit they'll not attempt in 2005.

It separates between wondering how things will go, and seeing how they do. One thing's certain, there's no guarantee there will be a happy ending. For the past ten years, England's trips Down Under have concluded in failure, as opposed to with them. Flower was dismissed as head coach after an embarrassing rout, in 2013-14, Silverwood was let go after a subsequent one, in 2021-22. It's possible to form a couple of teams out of England players who played their last Test match at the tail end of an Australian tour during the past 25 years, and still have a several individuals over to act as substitutes for both teams.

The current English side have never claimed to care too much about consequences. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the limited-overs team before him, consistently states that whether or not a lifted stroke is grabbed near the fence matters less as whether it was the right decision to attempt it in the outset, and in the field he's quick to praise a delivery man who concedes runs so long as they bringing the team nearer to taking that next wicket. But then the key rationale Stokes tried to teach his team to play this way was so they would be in a more advantageous state to execute the style of play he thinks will do well for them in Australia.

The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been training rigorously, already appears as the outcome they are bound to face. It is this bold strategy's decisive moment. And there are an abundance of predictions of failure in English cricket for the team to avoid backlash if they do suffer another bad defeat in the coming weeks. Stokes's approach has been based on defying expectations, and the other side is it seems that there are many individuals who would be pleased to be shown right.

In light of this, it's a suitable occasion to point out that the crucial matter isn't just where this ultimately leads, but if we had fun along the way. A few years back, England were an utterly abject national side. They had been overcome in a quartet of successive tournaments and were falling behind in the fifth one, against India, when it was postponed because of the pandemic. They had won only one Test match out of seventeen, and lost 12 of them by embarrassing margins. An eight-wicket defeat to New Zealand at the Birmingham ground, 157 runs to India at the the famous stadium, an an innings defeat to the Australians at Melbourne, 10 wickets to the Caribbean side in the island nation.

The team was soundly beaten by West Indies in Grenada in spring 2022 just before Joe Root stepped down as captain.

By the final stage, after all those months of health protocols and social distancing and controlled settings and endless beatings at the hands of all opponents, they were just about the most miserable and exhausted Test team England had ever fielded to a playing arena. A great deal of what Stokes and McCullum have done in the following period was in response to all that, as well as the Stokes' experiences during his five-month break from the game in 2021 when he had experienced a bout of anxiety. It was created to remind everyone that it was meant to be enjoyable, if it was intended as anything at all.

This continues to be the case now. Although the the prestigious contest is on the line, and although the team have finally recognized that they need to be a slightly versatile in the way they approach playing the game. Everyday life has a way of intruding, it can be difficult to retain the lessons we learn in our lowest moments.

This is the national side that peeled off successive final innings pursuits of significant totals in one summer against the Black Caps; that scored 378 to beat the subcontinent giants that same summer; that became the pioneering away squad to win a clean sweep in Pakistan; that showed resilience to a stalemate after going 2-0 down in the the contest; that beat the Indian team in Hyderabad off the back of one of the greatest innings ever executed in the subcontinent, and then beat Pakistan in the location off the back of a subsequent one.

Here we have the national side, too, that managed to end up being defeated in a Test by an innings defeat even though the other team made a modest 326; who fetched up suffering a loss in one of the more exciting matches ever contested after making a bold declaration in the first innings against the Black Caps, and then repeated the action against the Aussies; who were thrashed by 434 runs in the venue, and who were on the unsuccessful part of one of Sri Lanka's greatest victories. Collectively, they have recorded some of the most improbable victories, suffered some of the most embarrassing exits, achieved some of the surprising hundreds, and secured some of the most surprising exceptional bowling spells in the history of English cricket.

No matter how this historic contest shakes out, they have been, in turn, amazing, unbelievable, ridiculous, exasperating, and completely, without regret, unashamedly enjoyable.