🔗 Share this article

Labuschagne evenly coats butter on both sides of a slice of white bread. “That’s the key,” he tells the camera as he closes the lid of his grilled cheese press. “Boom. Then you get it golden on the outside.” He opens the grill to reveal a golden square of ideal crispiness, the melted cheese happily sizzling within. “So this is the secret method,” he announces. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

By now, you may feel a glaze of ennui is beginning to form across your eyes. The alarm bells of overly fancy prose are flashing wildly. You’re likely conscious that Labuschagne scored 160 for Queensland this week and is being feverishly talked up for an Australian Test recall before the England-Australia contest.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about that. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to sit through three paragraphs of wobbling whimsy about toasties, plus an additional unnecessary part of self-referential analysis in the direct address. You sigh again.

He turns the sandwich on to a plate and moves toward the fridge. “Few try this,” he announces, “but I actually like the cold toastie. Done, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, go bat, come back. Boom. Sandwich is perfect.”

Back to Cricket

Look, here’s the main point. Let’s address the match details initially? Little treat for making it this far. And while there may be just six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s hundred against the Tasmanian side – his third of the summer in various games – feels quietly decisive.

Here’s an Aussie opening batsmen badly short of performance and method, shown up by South Africa in the World Test Championship final, exposed again in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was left out during that trip, but on some level you felt Australia were keen to restore him at the soonest moment. Now he appears to have given them the ideal reason.

This represents a approach the team should follow. Khawaja has just one 100 in his last 44 knocks. Konstas looks hardly a first-innings batsman and rather like the good-looking star who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood epic. No other options has shown convincing form. Nathan McSweeney looks finished. Harris is still surprisingly included, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their leader, Pat Cummins, is unfit and suddenly this feels like a surprisingly weak team, short of strength or equilibrium, the kind of natural confidence that has often helped Australia dominate before a game starts.

Labuschagne’s Return

Step forward Marnus: a top-ranked Test batsman as just two years ago, just left out from the 50-over squad, the ideal candidate to bring stability to a fragile lineup. And we are advised this is a composed and reflective Labuschagne currently: a simplified, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, not as intensely fixated with small details. “It seems I’ve really cut out extras,” he said after his century. “Less focused on technique, just what I need to score runs.”

Of course, nobody truly believes this. Most likely this is a rebrand that exists entirely in Labuschagne’s mind: still furiously stripping down that technique from dawn to dusk, going further toward simplicity than any player has attempted. Like basic approach? Marnus will spend months in the nets with coaches and video clips, completely transforming into the most basic batsman that has ever played. That’s the trait of the obsessed, and the characteristic that has always made Labuschagne one of the most wildly absorbing players in the game.

The Broader Picture

Maybe before this very open Ashes series, there is even a kind of interesting contrast to Labuschagne’s endless focus. For England we have a side for whom technical study, not to mention self-review, is a forbidden topic. Trust your gut. Stay in the moment. Embrace the current.

On the opposite side you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a player terminally obsessed with the game and totally indifferent by public perception, who sees cricket even in the moments outside play, who approaches this quirky game with precisely the amount of absurd reverence it deserves.

And it worked. During his intense period – from the instant he appeared to substitute for an injured the senior batsman at Lord’s in 2019 to until late 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed to see the game on another level. To access it – through sheer intensity of will – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his time with English county cricket, colleagues noticed him on the game day resting on a bench in a focused mindset, mentally rehearsing all balls of his time at the crease. Per the analytics firm, during the initial period of his career a surprisingly high proportion of catches were missed when he batted. Remarkably Labuschagne had anticipated outcomes before anyone had a chance to change it.

Current Struggles

Maybe this was why his performance dipped the point he became number one. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Additionally – he stopped trusting his signature shot, got stuck in his crease and seemed to misjudge his positioning. But it’s connected really. Meanwhile his trainer, Neil D’Costa, believes a emphasis on limited-overs started to undermine belief in his technique. Positive development: he’s just been dropped from the ODI side.

Certainly it’s relevant, too, that Labuschagne is a devoutly religious individual, an religious believer who thinks that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his task as one of accessing this state of flow, despite being puzzling it may appear to the ordinary people.

This approach, to my mind, has always been the key distinction between him and Steve Smith, a instinctive player