Over the past 12 months, Ben Stokes, Brendon McCullum and their gloriously free-spirited England team have taken cricket fans on an unexpected journey from the utterly abject to the thrillingly absurd. Over the next six weeks, they have the chance to drag the rest of the country along, too.
Across five Tests, from Birmingham to Manchester, Leeds and twice to London, England and Australia’s men will go toe-to-toe in a series so delicately poised that few level voices have dared offer a prediction more extreme than 3-2 in either direction.
