🔗 Share this article

The Australian batsman carefully spreads butter on each surface of a slice of soft bread. “That’s essential,” he states as he lowers the lid of his grilled cheese press. “There you go. Then you get it toasted on each side.” He lifts the lid to reveal a perfectly browned of ideal crispiness, the melted cheese happily bubbling away. “Here’s the trick of the trade,” he announces. At which point, he does something unexpected and strange.

By now, I sense a glaze of ennui is beginning to appear in your eyes. The warning signs of overly fancy prose are blinking intensely. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne hit 160 for Queensland Bulls this week and is being widely discussed for an national team comeback before the England-Australia contest.

You likely wish to read more about that. But first – you now understand with frustration – you’re going to have to endure a section of playful digression about toasted sandwiches, plus an extra unwanted bonus paragraph of overly analytical commentary in the direct address. You feel resigned.

Marnus transfers the sandwich on to a dish and walks across the fridge. “Few try this,” he announces, “but I genuinely enjoy the cold toastie. Done, in the fridge. You allow the cheese to set, go for a hit, come back. Boom. It’s ideal.”

Back to Cricket

Alright, let’s try it like this. How about we cover the sports aspect out of the way first? Little treat for your patience. And while there may only be six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s hundred against Tasmania – his third in recent months in all formats – feels quietly decisive.

Here’s an Australia top three clearly missing form and structure, revealed against the Proteas in the Test championship decider, exposed again in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was dropped during that series, but on one hand you gathered Australia were keen to restore him at the first opportunity. Now he seems to have given them the ideal reason.

This represents a approach the team should follow. Usman Khawaja has one century in his recent 44 batting efforts. Konstas looks not quite a Test match opener and closer to the good-looking star who might act as a batsman in a Indian film. None of the alternatives has presented a strong argument. McSweeney looks finished. Another option is still oddly present, like dust or mold. Meanwhile their captain, Pat Cummins, is injured and suddenly this appears as a weirdly lightweight side, short of command or stability, the kind of natural confidence that has often given Australia a lead before a ball is bowled.

The Batsman’s Revival

Here comes Labuschagne: a world No 1 Test batter as in the recent past, recently omitted from the ODI side, the perfect character to restore order to a shaky team. And we are told this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne currently: a streamlined, no-frills Labuschagne, less maniacally obsessed with minor adjustments. “I feel like I’ve really cut out extras,” he said after his hundred. “Not really too technical, just what I need to make runs.”

Naturally, few accept this. Most likely this is a new approach that exists only in Labuschagne’s mind: still constantly refining that method from dawn to dusk, going more back to basics than anyone has ever dared. Like basic approach? Marnus will spend months in the training with coaches and video clips, exhaustively remoulding himself into the most basic batsman that has ever existed. This is just the quality of the focused, and the characteristic that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating players in the cricket.

Bigger Scene

Maybe before this inscrutably unpredictable Ashes series, there is even a sort of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. In England we have a team for whom any kind of analysis, especially personal critique, is a kind of dangerous taboo. Trust your gut. Be where the ball is. Embrace the current.

In the other corner you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a individual completely dedicated with the sport and magnificently unbothered by others’ opinions, who sees cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who handles this unusual pursuit with exactly the level of odd devotion it demands.

And it worked. During his intense period – from the instant he appeared to come in for a hurt Steve Smith at the famous ground in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game on another level. To tap into it – through sheer intensity of will – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his days playing Kent league cricket, fellow players saw him on the game day positioned on a seat in a focused mindset, actually imagining every single ball of his batting stint. As per Cricviz, during the initial period of his career a statistically unfathomable proportion of catches were missed when he batted. Somehow Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before fielders could respond to change it.

Form Issues

Perhaps this was why his form started to decline the moment he reached the summit. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a boundless, uncharted void before his eyes. Additionally – he stopped trusting his signature shot, got trapped on the crease and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his coach, Neil D’Costa, believes a focus on white-ball cricket started to weaken assurance in his positioning. Encouragingly: he’s just been dropped from the ODI side.

Surely it matters, too, that Labuschagne is a strongly faithful person, an committed Christian who believes that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his role as one of accessing this state of flow, no matter how mysterious it may look to the mortal of us.

This approach, to my mind, has consistently been the key distinction between him and Steve Smith, a more naturally gifted player