England under Stokes have reminded everyone that the sport of cricket is supposed to be fun.
Nobody talks about the last ball of the Ashes. It's the first that's legendary. That wide that reaches the slip cordon, that beautiful stroke for four, that wicket, clean bowled! Final deliveries? I needed to check. Ali cutting a stroke behind to end an innings loss in a dead rubber in 2015; Rankin being grabbed by the slip fielder off Ryan Harris, Rankin participating in his sole Test at the tail-end of a quick disintegration in a comprehensive defeat that's been commonplace in 2014; a Steve Harmison bouncer deflecting off Justin Langer's shoulder for four leg byes, the sole boundary the Australian team score in a target they'll not attempt in 2005.
It distinguishes between wondering how things will go, and understanding how they do. One undeniable fact, there's no certainty there will be a successful conclusion. For the past ten years, England's Australian tours have ended in ashes, rather than with them. Andy Flower was dismissed as coach after an embarrassing rout, in 2013-14, Chris Silverwood lost his after a further defeat, in 2021-22. You can make a two lineups out of England players who featured in their final Test match at the conclusion of an trip Down Under during the previous 25 years, and still have a several individuals over to carry the drinks for either side.
The current English side have not professed to be overly concerned about consequences. Stokes, like Morgan with the ODI squad before him, always says that regardless of whether a aerial shot is grabbed near the fence isn't as important as if it was the correct choice to play it in the first place, and in the field he's quick to praise a delivery man who concedes runs so long as they are bringing the team toward taking that subsequent dismissal. But then the very reason Stokes tried to guide his players to follow this style was so they would be in a superior situation to produce the kind of cricket he believes will do well for them in Australia.
The forthcoming contest, for which they have been preparing for so long, already feels like the result they are bound to face. It is this aggressive approach's decisive moment. And there are numerous warnings of defeat in English cricket for the team to escape criticism if they do suffer another bad defeat in the next few weeks. The captain's strategy has been founded on proving everyone wrong, and the other side is it seems that there are numerous observers who would be pleased to be proven correct.
Given that, it's a good moment to highlight that the crucial matter is not only where this concludes, but whether or not we found pleasure along the way. Four years ago, the English team were an utterly abject sports team. They had been beaten in a quartet of successive tournaments and were lagging in the final one, against India, when it was postponed because of the pandemic. They had won exactly one Test match out of seventeen, and lost 12 of them by large defeats. An eight-wicket defeat to the Black Caps at the historic venue, A 157-run loss to India at the the London ground, an an innings defeat to Australia at Melbourne, A defeat by ten wickets to West Indies in the island nation.
The English side was routed by West Indies in the island in the early part of 2022 just before Joe Root stepped aside as captain.
By the conclusion, after all those periods of health protocols and isolation and biosecure bubbles and endless beatings at the hands of all opponents, they were practically the most dejected and weary Test team the English cricket board had ever fielded to a cricket field. So much of what Ben Stokes and McCullum have accomplished in the years since was in response to all that, as well as the former's personal encounters during his hiatus 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 intended as fun, if it was meant to be anything.
This continues to be the case now. Despite when the the prestigious contest is on the line, and even if the team have eventually come to agree that they need to be a little more flexible in the way they approach performing. Everyday life has a way of intruding, it can be challenging to retain the lessons we learn in our most difficult periods.
Here is the England team that peeled off consecutive run chases of three challenging targets in one summer against New Zealand; that made a huge total to defeat India that same summer; that became the first touring team to win a whitewash in the subcontinent country; that battled hard to a stalemate after going 2-0 down in the the series; that beat India in the historic venue off the back of one of the finest batting displays ever played in the the region, and then overcame Pakistan in Multan off the back of a further exceptional performance.
It is the English squad, too, that unexpectedly end up suffering a defeat in a Test by an innings even though the rivals made a modest 326; who concluded suffering a loss in one of the better Tests ever played after making a confident decision in the first innings against the Kiwis, and then followed suit against the Aussies; who were soundly beaten by a massive 434 runs in the Indian city, and who were on the unsuccessful part of one of the Sri Lankan team's greatest victories. As a unit, they have recorded some of the most improbable victories, experienced some of the ugliest dismissals, scored some of the most improbable centuries, and taken some of the most surprising five-wicket hauls in the records of the English game.
No matter how this prestigious tournament shakes out, they have been, one after another, amazing, unbelievable, absurd, frustrating, and entirely, without regret, unashamedly entertaining.