Stokes' England have shown the world that cricket is all about enjoyment.

Few recall the final delivery of the Ashes. That initial ball that's renowned. That wide that flies to slip, that beautiful stroke for four, that wicket, bowled him! Concluding moments? I had to look them up. Ali cutting a stroke behind to finish an innings defeat in a inconsequential game in 2015; Rankin being grabbed by the slip fielder off Ryan Harris, Rankin participating in his single Test at the fag-end of a 30-over collapse in a clean sweep that's been commonplace in 2014; a Steve Harmison short ball deflecting off Justin Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the sole boundary Australia achieve in a target 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 certainty there will be a successful conclusion. For the last decade, the English Australian tours have ended in ashes, rather than with them. Flower was dismissed as head coach after a crushing loss, in 2013-14, Silverwood was let go after another, in 2021-22. You can make a two lineups out of England players who played their last Test match at the conclusion of an trip Down Under during the past 25 years, and still have a few players over to carry the drinks for both teams.

The current English side have never claimed to care too much about consequences. Stokes, like Morgan with the one-day side before him, consistently states that whether or not a lofted drive is grabbed near the fence isn't as important as if it was the right decision to attempt it in the beginning, and in the field he's happy to clap a delivery man who gives away boundaries so long as they help bring the team nearer to taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the primary motive Ben Stokes tried to instruct his squad to play this way was so they would be in a more advantageous state to deliver the brand of the game he believes will do well for them in Australia.

The forthcoming contest, for which they have been training rigorously, already appears as the outcome they can't get away from. It is this bold strategy's critical moment. And there are numerous “I told you so’s” in the national sport for the team to escape criticism if they do experience another poor loss in the coming weeks. Stokes's approach has been based on challenging skeptics, and the other side is it seems that there are numerous observers who would be thrilled to be validated.

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 found pleasure along the way. A few years back, England were an completely dismal sports team. They had been overcome in a quartet of successive tournaments and were lagging in the fifth, against the Indian team, when it was suspended because of the virus. They had won a single Test match out of a series of 17, and lost a dozen of them by embarrassing margins. Eight wickets to New Zealand at the historic venue, A defeat by 157 runs to the subcontinent team at the the London ground, an innings and 14 runs to the Aussie team at the MCG, A defeat by ten wickets to the Windies in the island nation.

The English side was routed by the Windies in Grenada in March 2022 just before Joe Root stepped aside as skipper.

By the end, after all those periods of nasal swabs and social distancing and controlled settings and repeated losses at the hands of each rival, they were just about the most disheartened and weary Test team the English cricket board had ever sent out to a cricket field. A significant portion of what Stokes and Brendon McCullum have done in the subsequent years was in reaction to all that, as well as the Stokes' personal encounters during his time away from the game in 2021 when he had endured a series of panic attacks. It was intended to make people recall that it was supposed to be fun, if it was supposed to be anything at all.

That remains true now. Despite when the Ashes is on the line, and although the team have finally recognized that they need to be a little more flexible in the way they approach playing the game. Everyday life has a way of intruding, it can be hard to hold on to the knowledge we acquire in our most difficult periods.

Here is the English squad that peeled off successive run chases of 277, 299, and 296 in one period against New Zealand; that scored 378 to defeat the subcontinent giants that identical season; that became the first touring team to win a comprehensive victory in the host nation; that fought back to a draw after going trailing by two matches in the Ashes; that beat India in the historic venue off the back of one of the most remarkable knocks ever played in the subcontinent, and then beat Pakistan in the location off the back of a further exceptional performance.

It is the national side, too, that unexpectedly end up being defeated in a Test by an innings defeat even though the opposition made a relatively low total; who fetched up suffering a loss in one of the finer contests ever contested after making a bold declaration in the first innings against New Zealand, and then did the same thing against Australia; who were routed by 434 runs in Rajkot, and who were on the losing side of one of Sri Lanka's most notable triumphs. As a unit, they have secured some of the most improbable victories, suffered some of the poorest performances, scored some of the surprising centuries, and secured some of the most startling five-fers in the history of the English game.

No matter how this Ashes series concludes, they have been, in turn, amazing, preposterous, ridiculous, infuriating, and entirely, unapologetically, boldly entertaining.