🔗 Share this article

Marnus carefully spreads butter on the top and bottom of a slice of white bread. “That’s the secret,” he explains as he brings down the lid of his grilled cheese press. “Perfect. Then you get it crisp on the outside.” He opens the grill to reveal a toasted delight of ideal crispiness, the melted cheese happily bubbling away. “And that’s the trick of the trade,” he explains. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

Already, I sense a glaze of ennui is beginning to cover your eyes. The alarm bells of sportswriting pretension are going off. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne hit 160 for Queensland Bulls this week and is being eagerly promoted for an national team comeback before the Ashes series.

You probably want 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 extra unwanted bonus paragraph of self-referential analysis in the direct address. You feel resigned.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a serving plate and heads over the fridge. “It’s uncommon,” he remarks, “but I personally prefer the cold toastie. Done, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, go bat, come back. Alright. Sandwich is perfect.”

On-Field Matters

Okay, here’s the main point. Shall we get the match details to begin with? Little treat for making it this far. And while there may only be six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s 100 runs against the Tasmanian side – his third this season in all cricket – feels importantly timed.

This is an Australian top order seriously lacking form and structure, revealed against South Africa in the WTC final, shown up once more in the West Indies after that. Labuschagne was left out during that trip, but on a certain level you felt Australia were eager to bring him back at the earliest chance. Now he looks to have given them the right opportunity.

Here is a strategy Australia must implement. The opener has a single hundred in his past 44 innings. Konstas looks hardly a first-innings batsman and more like the handsome actor who might play a Test opener in a Indian film. No other options has presented a strong argument. McSweeney looks cooked. Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like unwanted guests. Meanwhile their captain, Pat Cummins, is injured and suddenly this seems like a weirdly lightweight side, short of authority or balance, the kind of effortless self-assurance that has often helped Australia dominate before a game starts.

The Batsman’s Revival

Here comes Labuschagne: a world No 1 Test batter as recently as 2023, just left out from the one-day team, the right person to bring stability to a shaky team. And we are advised this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne these days: a streamlined, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, no longer as extremely focused with technical minutiae. “It seems I’ve really simplified things,” he said after his century. “Not really too technical, just what I must make runs.”

Naturally, this is doubted. Probably this is a rebrand that exists just in Labuschagne’s own head: still furiously stripping down that method from all day, going more back to basics than anyone else would try. You want less technical? Marnus will take time in the training with coaches and video clips, exhaustively remoulding himself into the least technical batter that has ever existed. That’s the trait of the obsessed, and the trait that has always made Labuschagne one of the highly engaging players in the game.

The Broader Picture

Perhaps before this very open historic rivalry, there is even a kind of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s endless focus. On England’s side we have a side for whom any kind of analysis, let alone self-analysis, is a risky subject. Go with instinct. Focus on the present. Smell the now.

On the opposite side you have a player such as Labuschagne, a man utterly absorbed with the sport and wonderfully unconcerned by public perception, who sees cricket even in the gaps in the game, who handles this unusual pursuit with precisely the amount of odd devotion it requires.

His method paid off. During his focused era – from the time he walked out to substitute for an injured Steve Smith at Lord’s in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed to see the game more deeply. To reach it – through absolute focus – on a elevated, strange, passionate tier. During his time with English county cricket, teammates would find him on the game day positioned on a seat in a meditative condition, literally visualising all balls of his time at the crease. According to cricket statisticians, during the early stages of his career a unusually large number of chances were spilled from his batting. Somehow Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before fielders could respond to influence it.

Current Struggles

Perhaps this was why his career began to disintegrate the time he achieved top ranking. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a boundless, uncharted void before his eyes. Furthermore – he stopped trusting his cover drive, got unable to move forward and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s part of the same issue. Meanwhile his trainer, Neil D’Costa, thinks a emphasis on limited-overs started to erode confidence in his positioning. Positive development: he’s recently omitted from the one-day team.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a devoutly religious individual, an religious believer who holds that this is all predetermined, who thus sees his task as one of achieving this peak performance, no matter how mysterious it may look to the mortal of us.

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