🔗 Share this article

Labuschagne evenly coats butter on each surface of a slice of soft bread. “That’s essential,” he states as he brings down the lid of his toastie maker. “Perfect. Then you get it crisp on each side.” He lifts the lid to reveal a perfectly browned of delicious perfection, the bubbling cheese happily melting inside. “And that’s the secret method,” he explains. At which point, he does something horrific and unspeakable.

At this stage, I sense a layer of boredom is beginning to cover your eyes. The red lights of sportswriting pretension are going off. You’re probably aware that Labuschagne hit 160 for Queensland this week and is being eagerly promoted 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 sit through three paragraphs of light-hearted musing about grilled cheese, plus an additional unnecessary part of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the second person. You feel resigned.

Marnus transfers the sandwich on to a plate and walks across the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he states, “but I personally prefer the grilled sandwich chilled. Boom, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, go for a hit, come back. Boom. Toastie’s ready to go.”

Back to Cricket

Look, let’s try it like this. How about we cover the match details out of the way first? Quick update for your patience. And while there may still be six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s century against the Tasmanian side – his third of the summer in various games – feels quietly decisive.

We have an Australia top three seriously lacking consistency and technique, exposed by the South African team in the World Test Championship final, exposed again in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was omitted during that trip, but on one hand you gathered Australia were keen to restore him at the first opportunity. Now he looks to have given them the ideal reason.

And this is a approach the team should follow. The opener has just one 100 in his last 44 knocks. Konstas looks hardly a Test opener and closer to the handsome actor who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood movie. No other options has made a cogent case. McSweeney looks out of form. Marcus Harris is still oddly present, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their captain, the pace bowler, is unfit and suddenly this feels like a unusually thin squad, short of strength or equilibrium, the kind of effortless self-assurance 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 recently as 2023, just left out from the 50-over squad, the perfect character to return structure to a shaky team. And we are informed this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne these days: a streamlined, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, less maniacally obsessed with minor adjustments. “I believe I have really cut out extras,” he said after his century. “Less focused on technique, just what I should score runs.”

Naturally, this is doubted. Probably this is a fresh image that exists just in Labuschagne’s mind: still endlessly adjusting that technique 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, exhaustively remoulding himself into the most basic batsman that has ever existed. This is just the quality of the focused, and the quality that has always made Labuschagne one of the highly engaging cricketers in the game.

Wider Context

Maybe before this very open historic rivalry, there is even a sort of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s constant dedication. On England’s side we have a team for whom any kind of analysis, let alone self-analysis, is a kind of dangerous taboo. Feel the flavours. Stay in the moment. Smell the now.

On the opposite side you have a individual like Labuschagne, a man completely dedicated with the sport and magnificently unbothered by others’ opinions, who finds cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who treats this absurd sport with just the right measure of quirky respect it demands.

His method paid off. During his shamanic phase – from the moment he strode out to replace a concussed Steve Smith at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed to see the game on another level. To tap into it – through pure determination – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his time with Kent league cricket, teammates would find him on the day of a match resting on a bench in a trance-like state, literally visualising every single ball of his innings. Per cricket statisticians, during the early stages of his career a surprisingly high number of chances were dropped off his bat. In some way Labuschagne had predicted events before anyone had a chance to affect it.

Current Struggles

It’s possible this was why his form started to decline the point he became number one. There were no new heights to imagine, just a empty space before his eyes. Additionally – he stopped trusting his favorite stroke, got unable to move forward and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his coach, Neil D’Costa, reckons a focus on white-ball cricket started to erode confidence in his technique. Good news: he’s now excluded from the ODI side.

Certainly it’s relevant, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an religious believer who thinks that this is all preordained, who thus sees his role as one of reaching this optimal zone, however enigmatic and inexplicable it may look to the rest of us.

This approach, to my mind, has always been the primary contrast between him and the other batsman, a instinctive player