Ben Stokes' team have shown us all that cricket is meant to be entertainment.

Nobody talks about the final delivery of the Ashes. It's the first that's legendary. That wide that flies to slip, that cover drive for four, that fallen stump, shattering the stumps! Final deliveries? I needed to check. Ali cutting a stroke behind to finish an innings rout in a meaningless match in 2015; Boyd Rankin being caught in the slips off Ryan Harris, Boyd Rankin participating in his one and only Test at the tail-end of a 30-over collapse in a comprehensive defeat that's been commonplace in 2014; a Harmison bouncer glancing off Justin Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the only four Australia achieve in a run chase they'll not attempt in 2005.

It's the difference between questioning how things will go, and understanding how they do. One certainty is, there's no certainty there will be a happy ending. For the last decade, the English Australian tours have finished in defeat, rather than with them. Andy Flower lost his job as coach after one humiliating defeat, in 2013-14, Silverwood lost his after a further defeat, in 2021-22. You can make a couple of teams out of English cricketers who participated in their concluding Test match at the tail end of an tour to Australia during the last quarter-century, and even have a several individuals over to act as substitutes for each squad.

The current English side have not professed to care too much about consequences. Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the limited-overs team before him, consistently states that regardless of whether a aerial shot is grabbed near the fence matters less as whether or not it was the right decision to execute it in the first place, and during play he's happy to clap a delivery man who concedes runs so long as they bringing the team toward taking that next wicket. But then the very reason Stokes tried to teach his team to adopt this approach was so they would be in a better position to execute the style of play he feels will do well for them in Australia.

This Ashes series, for which they have been planning extensively, already appears as the conclusion they are bound to face. It is Bazball's make or break moment. And there are an abundance of predictions of failure in the national sport for the team to get away with it if they do suffer another poor loss in the coming weeks. His methodology has been founded on challenging skeptics, and the other side is it appears there are plenty of people who would be pleased to be validated.

Given that, it's a suitable occasion to highlight that the key issue isn't just where this all ends up, but whether or not we had fun along the way. Four years ago, England were an thoroughly poor sports team. They had been defeated in four consecutive series and were falling behind in the final one, against the Indian team, when it was postponed because of the pandemic. They had won exactly one Test match out of seventeen, and lost twelve of them by humiliating deficits. Eight wickets to the Black Caps at Edgbaston, 157 runs to the Indian squad at the the London ground, an a comprehensive loss to Australia at the iconic ground, A defeat by ten wickets to West Indies in the island nation.

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

By the conclusion, after all those periods of testing and social distancing and controlled settings and endless beatings at the hands of all opponents, they were just about the most disheartened and exhausted Test team England had ever put on to a playing arena. A great deal of what Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum have done in the following period was in reaction to all that, as well as the former's experiences 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 entertaining, if it was supposed to be something.

It still is now. Despite 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 approach performing. Daily routines has a way of imposing, it can be difficult to retain the insights we gain in our toughest times.

This is the national side that peeled off back-to-back final innings pursuits of 277, 299, and 296 in one season against the Black Caps; that scored a massive 378 to overcome the Indian team that same summer; that became the first touring team to win a clean sweep in the subcontinent country; that fought back to a draw after going two games behind in the the series; that overcame the Indian team in the southern city off the back of one of the most remarkable knocks ever performed in the subcontinent, and then beat Pakistan in the location off the back of a further exceptional performance.

This 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 modest 326; who concluded being defeated in one of the finer contests ever played after making a cocksure declaration in the opening session against New Zealand, and then did the same thing against the Aussies; who were routed by a massive 434 runs in the venue, and who were on the unsuccessful part of one of Sri Lanka's most notable triumphs. Between them, they have achieved some of the surprising successes, endured some of the poorest performances, achieved some of the unlikeliest centuries, and achieved some of the most remarkable five-fers in the records of the national sport.

However this Ashes series shakes out, they have been, successively, astonishing, preposterous, unconventional, frustrating, and completely, without regret, unashamedly entertaining.