🔗 Share this article

Labuschagne evenly coats butter on the top and bottom of a slice of white bread. “That’s the key,” he explains as he closes the lid of his toastie maker. “Perfect. Then you get it toasted on each side.” He lifts the lid to reveal a golden square of pure toasted goodness, the melted cheese happily bubbling away. “And that’s the trick of the trade,” he explains. At which point, he does something horrific and unspeakable.

At this stage, I sense a sense of disinterest is beginning to appear in your eyes. The warning signs of elaborate writing are going off. You’re probably aware that Labuschagne made 160 runs for Queensland this week and is being widely discussed for an Australian Test recall before the Ashes.

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 a section of light-hearted musing about toasties, plus an additional unnecessary part of self-referential analysis in the “you” perspective. You groan once more.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a serving plate and heads over the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he announces, “but I personally prefer the grilled sandwich chilled. There, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, go bat, come back. Boom. Sandwich is perfect.”

The Cricket Context

Look, to cut to the chase. How about we cover the sports aspect out of the way first? Little treat for making it this far. And while there may still be six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s century against Tasmania – his third this season in all formats – feels quietly decisive.

This is an Aussie opening batsmen seriously lacking consistency and technique, exposed by the Proteas in the Test championship decider, highlighted further in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was omitted during that trip, but on one hand you felt Australia were eager to bring him back at the earliest chance. Now he appears to have given them the right opportunity.

And this is a approach the team should follow. Khawaja has one century in his past 44 innings. Konstas looks less like a Test opener and rather like the attractive performer who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood movie. No other options has made a cogent case. Nathan McSweeney looks finished. Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their captain, the pace bowler, is unfit and suddenly this feels like a weirdly lightweight side, missing command or stability, the kind of natural confidence that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a ball is bowled.

Labuschagne’s Return

Here comes Labuschagne: a top-ranked Test batsman as in the recent past, recently omitted from the 50-over squad, the perfect character to bring stability to a brittle empire. And we are informed this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne currently: a simplified, no-frills Labuschagne, not as intensely fixated with small details. “I feel like I’ve really simplified things,” he said after his ton. “Not overthinking, just what I must score runs.”

Naturally, few accept this. In all likelihood this is a new approach that exists only in Labuschagne’s personal view: still endlessly adjusting that approach from morning to night, going further toward simplicity than anyone else would try. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will spend months in the training with coaches and video clips, thoroughly reshaping his game into the least technical batter that has ever been seen. This is just the quality of the focused, and the trait that has always made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating sportsmen in the sport.

Wider Context

Perhaps before this highly uncertain England-Australia contest, there is even a kind of interesting contrast to Labuschagne’s constant dedication. On England’s side we have a squad for whom any kind of analysis, let alone self-analysis, is a kind of dangerous taboo. Trust your gut. Be where the ball is. Smell the now.

On the opposite side you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a player utterly absorbed with cricket and totally indifferent by who knows about it, who finds cricket even in the gaps in the game, who treats this absurd sport with precisely the amount of odd devotion it demands.

His method paid off. During his focused era – from the time he walked out to replace a concussed Steve Smith at the famous ground in 2019 to until late 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game with greater insight. To tap into it – through pure determination – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his days playing Kent league cricket, colleagues noticed him on the day of a match resting on a bench in a focused mindset, literally visualising every single ball of his batting stint. According to cricket statisticians, during the initial period of his career a unusually large number of chances were missed when he batted. Somehow Labuschagne had anticipated outcomes before fielders could respond to influence it.

Recent Challenges

Maybe this was why his form started to decline the time he achieved top ranking. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a empty space before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he lost faith in his signature shot, got stuck in his crease and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his mentor, his coach, reckons a focus on white-ball cricket started to erode confidence in his technique. Positive development: he’s now excluded from the one-day team.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an religious believer who believes that this is all preordained, who thus sees his task as one of achieving this peak performance, no matter how mysterious it may appear to the rest of us.

This approach, to my mind, has long been the primary contrast between him and the other batsman, a more naturally gifted player