Few recall the last ball of the Ashes. That initial ball that's legendary. That wide that flies to slip, that elegant shot for four, that fallen stump, shattering the stumps! Last balls? I had to research them. Moeen Ali slicing a drive behind to end an innings loss in a meaningless match in 2015; Rankin being taken at slip off Harris, Boyd Rankin featuring in his single Test at the tail-end of a quick disintegration in a comprehensive defeat that's been commonplace in 2014; a Steve Harmison rising delivery ricocheting away Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the single four the Australian team score in a target they'll never get to make in 2005.
It separates between speculating how things will go, and knowing how they do. One certainty is, there's no guarantee there will be a positive outcome. For the past ten years, the English trips Down Under have finished in defeat, rather than with them. Andy Flower lost his job as manager after a crushing loss, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood was sacked after a further defeat, in 2021-22. You can make 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 previous 25 years, and even have a few players over to carry the drinks for either side.
This England team have not professed to be overly concerned about results. Ben Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the one-day side before him, always says that whether or not a lofted drive is taken at the rope isn't as important as whether it was the proper call to attempt it in the outset, and during play he's quick to praise a pitcher who concedes runs so long as they are bringing the team nearer to taking that following breakthrough. But then the primary motive Ben Stokes tried to instruct his squad to follow this style was so they would be in a more advantageous state to produce the style of play he believes will do well for them in Australia.
This Ashes series, for which they have been training rigorously, already seems like the conclusion they cannot escape. It is this bold strategy's make or break moment. And there are numerous “I told you so’s” in English cricket for the team to avoid backlash if they do suffer another poor loss in the next few weeks. The captain's strategy has been predicated on proving everyone wrong, and the flipside is it feels as if there are plenty of people who would be pleased to be proven correct.
Considering this, it's a suitable occasion to point out that the crucial matter goes beyond where this all ends up, but regardless of whether we enjoyed it along the way. A few years back, the English team were an completely dismal national side. They had been defeated in a quartet of successive tournaments and were falling behind in the fifth one, against India, when it was suspended because of the pandemic. They had won a single Test match out of a series of 17, and lost 12 of them by humiliating deficits. A loss by eight wickets to the Kiwis at the historic venue, A defeat by 157 runs to India at the the famous stadium, an innings and 14 runs to the Aussie team at the MCG, 10 wickets to the Caribbean side in the island nation.
The team was soundly beaten by West Indies in the island in spring 2022 just before Joe Root stepped down as leader.
By the final stage, after all those periods of testing and social distancing and biosecure bubbles and repeated losses at the hands of everyone they played, they were virtually the most miserable and careworn Test team the English cricket board had ever fielded to a playing arena. So much of what Ben Stokes and 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 experienced a series of panic attacks. It was intended to emphasize to all that it was intended as entertaining, if it was supposed to be anything at all.
It still is now. Although the the historic series is on the line, and regardless if the team have finally recognized that they need to be a slightly versatile in the way they go about performing. Everyday life has a way of intruding, it can be difficult to hold on to the lessons we learn in our toughest times.
Here is the national side that peeled off consecutive fourth-innings chases of three challenging targets in one season against New Zealand; that achieved 378 to defeat the subcontinent giants that same summer; that became the pioneering away squad to win a clean sweep in the host nation; that fought back to a draw after going trailing by two matches in the the series; that overcame the Indian team in Hyderabad off the back of one of the finest batting displays ever played in the subcontinent, and then beat Pakistan in the city off the back of a further exceptional performance.
Here we have the English squad, too, that managed to end up losing a Test by an innings defeat even though the rivals made a relatively low total; who fetched up losing one of the better Tests ever played after making a confident decision in the opening session against the Kiwis, and then did the same thing against Australia; who were soundly beaten by a massive 434 runs in the venue, and who were on the losing side of one of the Sri Lankan team's most notable triumphs. As a unit, they have recorded some of the surprising successes, endured some of the ugliest dismissals, scored some of the most improbable hundreds, and secured some of the most startling five-fers in the records of the English game.
No matter how this prestigious tournament shakes out, they have been, in turn, incredible, preposterous, absurd, frustrating, and completely, unrepentantly, unapologetically enjoyable.
