🔗 Share this article

Labuschagne carefully spreads butter on the top and bottom of a slice of soft bread. “That’s essential,” he tells the camera as he brings down the lid of his toastie maker. “There you go. Then you get it toasted on the outside.” He checks inside to reveal a perfectly browned of pure toasted goodness, the bubbling cheese happily sizzling within. “So this is the key technique,” he announces. At which point, he does something unexpected and strange.

Already, I sense a sense of disinterest is beginning to form across your eyes. The red lights of sportswriting pretension are going off. You’re likely conscious that Labuschagne scored 160 for his state team this week and is being eagerly promoted for an return to the Test side before the Ashes.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about his performance. But first – you now grasp with irritation – you’re going to have to sit through a section of light-hearted musing about toasted sandwiches, plus an further tangential section of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the direct address. You feel resigned.

Marnus transfers the sandwich on to a plate and heads over the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he states, “but I personally prefer the grilled sandwich chilled. There, in the fridge. You allow the cheese to set, head to practice, come back. Perfect. Sandwich is perfect.”

Back to Cricket

Alright, here’s the main point. Shall we get the sports aspect initially? Quick update for making it this far. And while there may be just six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s 100 runs against Tasmania – his third this season in all formats – feels importantly timed.

Here’s an Australia top three clearly missing consistency and technique, shown up by the Proteas in the World Test Championship final, exposed again in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was dropped during that tour, but on one hand you gathered Australia were eager to bring him back at the earliest chance. Now he looks to have given them the ideal reason.

Here is a strategy Australia must implement. The opener has just one 100 in his past 44 innings. Sam Konstas looks less like a Test match opener and closer to the handsome actor who might play a Test opener in a Bollywood movie. Other candidates has shown convincing form. McSweeney looks cooked. Marcus Harris is still oddly present, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their captain, the pace bowler, is unfit and suddenly this seems like a unusually thin squad, missing strength or equilibrium, the kind of built-in belief that has often helped Australia dominate before a ball is bowled.

The Batsman’s Revival

Here comes Labuschagne: a leading Test player as just two years ago, just left out from the 50-over squad, the ideal candidate to return structure to a brittle empire. And we are told this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne now: a pared-down, back-to-basics Labuschagne, less maniacally obsessed with small details. “I feel like I’ve really stripped it back,” he said after his century. “Less focused on technique, just what I need to score runs.”

Naturally, nobody truly believes this. In all likelihood this is a rebrand that exists entirely in Labuschagne’s mind: still endlessly adjusting that approach from all day, going more back to basics than anyone else would try. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will devote weeks in the training with advisors and replays, exhaustively remoulding himself into the simplest player that has ever existed. This is just the trait of the obsessed, and the characteristic that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the most wildly absorbing players in the sport.

Wider Context

Perhaps before this inscrutably unpredictable historic rivalry, there is even a sort of interesting contrast to Labuschagne’s endless focus. For England we have a team for whom any kind of analysis, let alone self-analysis, is a risky subject. Feel the flavours. Focus on the present. Smell the now.

In the other corner you have a individual like Labuschagne, a player utterly absorbed with the sport and magnificently unbothered by who knows about it, who finds cricket even in the gaps in the game, who handles this unusual pursuit with exactly the level of quirky respect it requires.

This approach succeeded. During his shamanic phase – from the time he walked out to replace a concussed the senior batsman at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to until late 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game more deeply. To reach it – through sheer intensity of will – on a elevated, strange, passionate tier. During his days playing English county cricket, teammates would find him on the morning of a game resting on a bench in a trance-like state, mentally rehearsing every single ball of his time at the crease. According to Cricviz, during the initial period of his career a statistically unfathomable proportion of catches were missed when he batted. Remarkably Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before anyone had a chance to influence it.

Recent Challenges

It’s possible this was why his form started to decline the point he became number one. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Furthermore – he stopped trusting his signature shot, got unable to move forward and seemed to misjudge his positioning. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his coach, Neil D’Costa, thinks a focus on white-ball cricket started to weaken assurance in his positioning. Encouragingly: he’s just been dropped from the one-day team.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a strongly faithful person, an committed Christian who thinks that this is all predetermined, who thus sees his role as one of reaching this optimal zone, however enigmatic and inexplicable it may appear to the rest of us.

This mindset, to my mind, has long been the key distinction between him and Smith, a more naturally gifted player