Win, lose or draw, this series of five five-day battles between the sport’s oldest foes, England and Australia, will sustain me and millions of like-minded Brits through the dark days of winter, albeit in a bleary-eyed state given the time difference, almost all the way through to Pyeongchang 2018 in February.

Indeed, players involved in the subsequent short-form one-day and Twenty20 competitions may not depart the Antipodes until February 19, date of the women’s Olympic ice hockey semi-finals.

Of course, the wonders of modern technology mean that we creatures of the night give barely a second thought to our ability to witness one of the great feasts of the quadrennial sports calendar in real time and almost pornographic detail, in spite of the fact it is all happening 10,000 miles away.

It was not always so – as explained with intelligence and clarity in a book which draws its inspiration from one of the greatest images that the age of sport has so far produced in its 150 or so-year span.

The image, known as Jumping Out, is a portrait of Australian batsman Victor Trumper taken by photographer George Beldam at The Oval in south London in May 1905.

The book is Stroke of Genius* by Gideon Haigh, the London-born Australian who is among our very best cricket writers.

The subject is well-chosen in that the image of a doomed hero who had only 10 years to live looks as fresh today as when it was taken 112 years ago.

This even though it has become so well known that it might almost be viewed as the sporting equivalent of Korda’s ultra-familiar shot of Che Guevara, or a Warhol Marilyn.

As Haigh begins to explain from sentence one – “Cricket was devised to be played, not watched” – the sport has certain characteristics that made it a particular challenge for the pioneers of photography who preceded Beldam.

Characteristic number one is that the most significant action takes place in the middle, ie a long way away from the audience.

Characteristic number two is that, although in some ways the slowest of games, the decisive actions usually flash by in an instant.

One might add the further detail that, while the traditional deep red cricket ball might show up to good advantage against the white of sight-screen or flannel, it can be not at all easy for spectators, perhaps as much as 100 metres away, to pick out, especially once battered and old.

As a consequence, early depictions of the game tend to be from the boundary, with the crowd in the foreground and the actual protagonists little more than white dots.

This applies not just to photographs: one celebrated cricket painting – under which I had the privilege of dining earlier this month - seeks to make a virtue out of this by including late 19^th-century celebrities, such as actress Lillie Langtry and Lady de Grey, as spectators.

The huge work – The Imaginary Cricket Match – does at least use a fieldsman stationed on the boundary to afford a link to the distant square.

Another consequence was that, much as accurate representation of the horse in motion was beyond artists prior to photographer Eadweard Muybridge’s work on the subject in the 1870s and 1880s, capturing the technique of the great batters and bowlers of the era remained elusive.

That is until technology provided the necessary tools.

Haigh recounts how Beldam, a cricketer himself motivated partly by a desire to improve his own game, bought a camera – a Videx – equipped with “a focal-plane shutter adjustable by turning a knob on the revolving plate that went all the way to one-1000^th of a second”.

With the cooperation of some of the top players – including C.B. Fry, who besides his cricket exploits was once co-holder of the world long jump record and played in the 1902 FA Cup final – Beldam then set about systematically capturing their techniques for posterity.

Looking at his supreme achievement, Jumping Out, you are aware of a hazy crowd in the background behind the boundary-rope. I had always therefore lazily assumed that the photograph must have been a genuine action-shot, taken during a match.

But of course that would have required not only a fast shutter-speed, but some kind of long-focus lens – either that or for Beldam to be stationed at silly point, at considerable inconvenience to the fielding side and personal risk to himself.

Haigh recounts that the shot which became Jumping Out almost certainly was one of a series captured, with the cooperation of Trumper and some uncredited human bowling machine, just before play began in a match between Surrey and the Australians on 11-13 May 1905.

This would explain, for example, why Trumper is wearing only one batting-glove, as well as the absence of fielders in the middle distance.

True photographs from the thick of the action in a real match would have to wait another generation, until the likes of Sydney Mail staff photographer Herbert Fishwick acquired a 43-inch lens, developed for aerial photography, but also ideal for, as Haigh puts it, “bridging the distances involved in photographing cricket”.

In November 1928, Fishwick duly snapped another time-defying image, this one of MCC batsman Wally Hammond executing a perfectly-balanced cover drive.

One detail in Haigh’s account I particularly appreciated was that Beldam was a proficient enough cricketer to have dismissed Trumper in a real match while representing a Gentlemen of England XI at Crystal Palace.

Apart from its sublime, quasi-symmetrical composition, the reason Beldam’s best-known image has proved so enduring is that it represents so exactly the picture of one of Australia’s greatest athletes that has come down to us today.

If the straight drive – returning the ball whence it came, but with interest – may or may not have been Trumper’s signature shot, there is no doubt that it epitomises the way we now see him: as a supreme but natural stylist, cut from the same cloth as Roger Federer, but with an additional Jimmy Dean cachet, the posthumous consolation of some of those who die young.

Haigh has distilled this point to its essence: “The photograph was once of Trumper,” he writes. “Now it is Trumper.”

And if you want a flavour of how highly his contemporaries rated him, how about this tribute from Dick Lilley, the much-capped England wicketkeeper of the era, who looked on as Trumper compiled an unbeaten 185 at Sydney.

“Had he remained to double his score, I should never have tired of watching him,” Lilley said.

As Haigh then writes: “Trumper’s batting transcended national allegiance”.

How fortunate we will be if, in a couple of months, we can say the same about any of those now preparing to strap on their pads in Brisbane.

* Stroke of Genius – Victor Trumper and the shot that changed cricket by Gideon Haigh, first published by Simon & Schuster in 2016.