Australia make like a tree in the fifth Ashes Test

There are many aesthetic joys to be found in the stroke of a cricketer’s bat.

A well-played cover drive is a thing of rare beauty, for example, whether of the swashbuckling backfoot variety beloved of Steve Waugh, the effortless front-foot ease of his brother Mark, or the blazing flourish of Brian Lara.

Ricky Ponting in his pomp played straight drives and pulls with almost terrifying authority, strokes that told the bowler in no uncertain terms, you are here merely for my own glorification, and your every ball is fuel for the furnace of my magnificence.

The flowing on-drive of Michael Slater, the arrogantly dismissive clip off Dean Jones’s toes, the brutal poetry of Adam Gilchrist’s long-handled swordplay.

The thunderous cannonade of Matthew Hayden when he strolled down the pitch to a fast bowler and bombarded the crowd at long-on, the fearsome axeman’s rasp of David Warner’s cut, the languid cascade that flowed from the aforementioned Waugh Junior.

All these shots and more have over the years thrilled my senses and reinforced the status of cricket as the most artistic of sports.

But at the time of writing, after the first day of the fifth Test at the Oval, 2015, I must say there is one stroke that stands above all others for beauty, majesty, and aesthetic satisfaction.

That shot is the leave outside off stump.

Has ever inaction been so exquisite? Has ever withdrawal been so heroic?

The leave was sadly neglected at Edgbaston and, particularly at Trent Bridge, where Australia’s batsmen played as if they’d been informed white feathers would be sent to the family of any man who shouldered arms. It was as if Darren Lehmann had forced his charges to stay up all night with toothpicks holding their eyes open, watching the replay of Glenn Maxwell being bowled by Ryan Duffield on a loop.

For two entire Tests, the Australian approach to batting had been streamlined almost out of existence, simplified to the basic philosophy, ‘See the ball, hit the ball, see the ball get caught, walk off’. It had gotten to the point where English people everywhere were mocking the Australians’ fatal addiction to flirting with the ball outside off stump with cruel jokes like:

Q: What’s the difference between an Australian batsman and Cinderella?

A: Cinderella is a fictional character featured in a European folk tale popularised in a late 17th-century version by Charles Perrault, while Australian batsmen are professional sportspeople representing the nation of Australia at cricket.

I know, I don’t really understand that joke either, but the English find it hilarious, and there is no greater humiliation for an Australian sportsman than being described as dissimilar to an imaginary princess.

Yet at The Oval – admittedly too late to save the series, but not too late to win one Test match, in itself always a worthy and admirable achievement – Australians have rediscovered the joy of a good leave. The warm satisfaction that suffuses a man when he hears the ball thump into the keeper’s gloves and knows his bat is standing proudly and safely above his own head has returned.

Not that hearing that thump after having missed the ball completely is anything to be ashamed of. Indeed, it was also a great failing of Australia at Trent Bridge that the team completely forgot how to miss the ball, and the play-and-miss made a welcome return to the repertoire at The Oval as well.

But ah, the leave. So elegant, so evocative of the very spirit of cricket. So emblematic of Test matches as the ultimate determinant of cricketing skill. For it is quite easy to swipe at every ball that comes your way. Indeed, when you hold a bat in your hand and a ball is hurled at you, every reptilian instinct in your hindbrain is screaming at you to hit it.

The ability to calmly remove your bat from the field of battle, and let the ball pass harmlessly by, is the sign of a truly evolved human being, and proof of our capacity, as a species, to reason, and to overcome the baser drives of our primitive natures.

Who is to say which variety of the leave is more beautiful? The lunge forward, pad thrusting forcefully out towards cover as the hands stretch to the heavens, is an attractive move, all the more satisfying for its marriage of aggressive intent with practical inertia.

But then there is also the backfoot shuffle across the stumps, the waving of the bat above the ball travelling ever so close to the stumps, feet together, eye ever watchful, a non-stroke to be eminently proud of – the greatest leavers, of course, are marked by their ability not to leave the wide one, but to leave that which seems to more fallible eyes to be heading for the stumps.

Then there is the artful ratcheting of dramatic tension of the last-moment leave, the fierce focus on the ball’s trajectory, the presentation of the bat as if to strike, and then suddenly, when contact seems inevitable, the mischievous waggle of withdrawal. The bowler’s smug smile is wiped in a flash off his face, as the victim he thought he’d ensnared winks an eye and scampers from the trap.

And who can not love the earthy solidity of good pad-play against a spinner? The wiles of the tweaker exercised to their fullest extent, only to be thwarted not by reckless willow-tossing, but by the calm, avuncular reassurance of a pad placed in the delivery’s path with all the cool calculation of Ulysses S. Grant positioning the Army of the Potomac. Only the very greatest generals can master the pad-away.

Then of course there is the duck – the good kind. That masterly affirmation of masculinity, presented in response to the macho head games of a fast bowler. ‘I do not need to play the hook to be a real man,’ says the ducker, and by refusing the invitation to the rumble, proves himself more of a man than any number of cowardly street brawlers who fall victim to the well-placed deep backward square.

Why these wonderful strokes are so neglected when speaking of the mastery of batsmanship I have no idea. More than one great batsman built his career on his ability to let the ball whistle peacefully past. David Boon bullied bowlers into submission with the contemptuousness of his leaves, taking guard on leg stump only to step across, completely unruffled, and lift the bat with an expression of utter disdain for the bowler’s unsubtle attempts to extract a shot from him.

Or look at Mike Hussey, who understood perhaps better than any other that there are only three reasons to play at a ball: the ball is going to hit your stumps; the ball is going to hit your body; or you are trying to score runs. The pointless poke was anathema to Hussey, and though nobody’s perfect, the vast majority of the time, if Hussey played at a ball, there was a purpose – if he found the middle of the bat, it would be a worthwhile stroke.

So as an Australian, but not just an Australian – as a lover of cricket, and as a believer in the eternal human truth that Englishmen deserve to lose at everything – it was a colossal relief to see the Australian team rediscover the sacred art of the leave at The Oval. And more than rediscover it – they embraced it. There were more left balls out there than at a Stalinist bath-house’s Christmas party. You could clog Downton Abbey’s gutters with the leaves. The leaves were so well crafted Walt Whitman wished he had written them.

By the end of the day I was replete with leaves, and at the same time hungry for more. That’s the thing about the leave: you become addicted to it. I am at the point where I will be perfectly happy if Day 2 consists of Australians shouldering arms 540 times in a row. I want Australia to win. I want Australia to score many runs. I want Australia to take loads of wickets.

But right now, I will be happy to just see Australia leave the damn ball. Having waited so long for it to happen, you can’t blame me for wanting to indulge a little.