England under Stokes have reminded everyone that the sport of cricket is meant to be fun.
People rarely mention the last ball of the Ashes. It's the first that's renowned. That errant delivery that flies to slip, that cover drive for four, that wicket, clean bowled! Final deliveries? I needed to check. Moeen Ali edging a shot behind to conclude a batting effort defeat in a inconsequential game in 2015; Boyd Rankin being caught in the slips off Ryan Harris, Boyd Rankin featuring in his one and only Test at the tail-end of a quick disintegration in a clean sweep that's been plentiful in 2014; a Harmison bouncer deflecting off Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the sole boundary the Australian team achieve in a target they'll not undertake in 2005.
It's the difference between speculating how things will go, and understanding how they do. One undeniable fact, there's no certainty there will be a successful conclusion. For the previous decade, England's visits to Australia have ended in ashes, rather than with them. Flower was removed as manager after a crushing loss, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood lost his after a subsequent one, in 2021-22. It's possible to form a two lineups out of England players who played their last Test match at the tail end of an trip Down Under during the last quarter-century, and still have a couple of men over to act as substitutes for either side.
The current English side have not professed to worry excessively about consequences. Ben Stokes, like Eoin Morgan with the one-day side before him, frequently remarks that if a aerial shot is grabbed near the fence is secondary as whether it was the proper call to attempt it in the first place, and while fielding he's pleased to applaud a bowler who gives away boundaries so long as they help bring the team nearer to taking that next wicket. But then the very reason Ben Stokes tried to instruct his squad to adopt this approach was so they would be in a superior situation to execute the brand of the game he thinks will perform effectively for them in Australia.
The upcoming Ashes, for which they have been training rigorously, already appears as the outcome they can't get away from. It is this aggressive approach's decisive moment. And there are numerous warnings of defeat in English cricket for the team to avoid backlash if they do experience another poor loss in the coming weeks. The captain's strategy has been founded on challenging skeptics, and the counterpart is it appears there are numerous observers who would be thrilled to be proven correct.
Considering this, it's a suitable occasion to highlight that the crucial matter is not only where this all ends up, but regardless of whether we had fun along the way. A few years back, the English team were an utterly abject national side. They had been overcome in four straight contests and were lagging in the final one, against India, when it was postponed because of the virus. They had won only one Test match out of seventeen, and lost 12 of them by embarrassing margins. Eight wickets to New Zealand at the historic venue, A 157-run loss to the Indian squad at the the famous stadium, an an innings defeat to the Australians at Melbourne, 10 wickets to the Windies in the island nation.
England were thrashed by the Caribbean team in Grenada in spring 2022 just before Root stepped aside as leader.
By the end, after all those months of health protocols and isolation and controlled settings and repeated losses at the hands of all opponents, they were practically the most disheartened and weary Test team England had ever fielded to a sports ground. A great deal of what Ben Stokes and McCullum have accomplished in the years since was in reaction to all that, as well as the former's personal encounters during his time away from the game in 2021 when he had experienced a series of panic attacks. It was designed to make people recall that it was meant to be entertaining, if it was supposed to be anything.
It still is now. Even when the the prestigious contest is on the line, and although the team have ultimately accepted that they need to be a slightly versatile in the way they approach competing. Daily routines has a way of crowding in, it can be challenging to remember the lessons we learn in our lowest moments.
This is the national side that secured successive fourth-innings chases of 277, 299, and 296 in one season against the Black Caps; that made a huge total to beat India that corresponding period; that became the pioneering away squad to win a clean sweep in the subcontinent country; that fought back to a stalemate after going two games behind in the the series; that defeated the Indian team in the southern city off the back of one of the greatest innings ever executed in the subcontinent, and then beat the Pakistani team in the location off the back of another.
This is the national side, too, that somehow end up being defeated in a Test by an innings even though the opposition made a modest 326; who ended up suffering a loss in one of the finer contests ever staged after making a bold declaration in the initial batting effort against New Zealand, and then repeated the action against Australia; who were routed by 434 runs in the Indian city, and who were on the unsuccessful part of one of Sri Lanka's greatest victories. As a unit, they have secured some of the most improbable victories, endured some of the ugliest dismissals, achieved some of the unlikeliest hundreds, and achieved some of the most remarkable exceptional bowling spells in the annals of the national sport.
No matter how this historic contest unfolds, they have been, in turn, astonishing, preposterous, ridiculous, frustrating, and completely, without regret, unapologetically thrilling.