🔗 Share this article

Labuschagne evenly coats butter on both sides of a slice of plain bread. “That’s essential,” he tells the camera as he lowers the lid of his grilled cheese press. “Perfect. Then you get it toasted on each side.” He opens the grill to reveal a toasted delight of pure toasted goodness, the bubbling cheese happily melting inside. “So this is the secret method,” he announces. At which point, he does something unexpected and strange.

At this stage, it’s clear a layer of boredom is beginning to cover your eyes. The warning signs of overly fancy prose are going off. You’re likely conscious that Labuschagne hit 160 for Queensland Bulls this week and is being eagerly promoted for an return to the Test side before the Ashes.

You probably want to read more about his performance. But first – you now understand with frustration – you’re going to have to endure three paragraphs of light-hearted musing about toasted sandwiches, plus an additional unnecessary part of self-referential analysis in the “you” perspective. You sigh again.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a serving plate and moves toward the fridge. “Few try this,” he remarks, “but I genuinely enjoy the grilled sandwich chilled. Done, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, head to practice, come back. Alright. Toastie’s ready to go.”

The Cricket Context

Okay, to cut to the chase. How about we cover the sports aspect initially? Small reward 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 in recent months in various games – feels significantly impactful.

We have an Australia top three badly short of form and structure, revealed against the South African team in the World Test Championship final, shown up once more in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was dropped during that series, but on one hand you gathered Australia were keen to restore him at the first opportunity. Now he seems to have given them the ideal reason.

This represents a approach the team should follow. Usman Khawaja has a single hundred in his last 44 knocks. Konstas looks hardly a Test opener and more like the attractive performer who might act as a batsman in a Indian film. Other candidates has presented a strong argument. Nathan McSweeney looks cooked. Marcus Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their leader, Cummins, is injured and suddenly this feels like a weirdly lightweight side, missing authority or balance, the kind of built-in belief that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a game starts.

The Batsman’s Revival

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 fragile lineup. And we are told this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne now: a simplified, no-frills Labuschagne, less extremely focused with technical minutiae. “It seems I’ve really cut out extras,” he said after his ton. “Not overthinking, just what I must bat effectively.”

Clearly, few accept this. Probably this is a new approach that exists only in Labuschagne’s own head: still endlessly adjusting that technique from dawn to dusk, going deeper into fundamentals than anyone has ever dared. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will devote weeks in the nets with advisors and replays, thoroughly reshaping his game into the most basic batsman that has ever existed. That’s the trait of the obsessed, and the quality that has always made Labuschagne one of the highly engaging players in the cricket.

Bigger Scene

Perhaps before this inscrutably unpredictable Ashes series, there is even a type of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. On England’s side we have a squad for whom any kind of analysis, not to mention self-review, is a kind of dangerous taboo. Go with instinct. Focus on the present. Live in the instant.

On the opposite side you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a player completely dedicated with cricket and magnificently unbothered by who knows about it, who finds cricket even in the moments outside play, who approaches this quirky game with just the right measure of quirky respect it requires.

And it worked. During his intense period – from the time he walked out to replace a concussed Smith at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to through 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed to see the game more deeply. To access it – through pure determination – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his time with Kent league cricket, teammates would find him on the morning of a game positioned on a seat in a focused mindset, literally visualising every single ball of his innings. As per the analytics firm, during the initial period of his career a unusually large proportion of catches were missed when he batted. In some way Labuschagne had predicted events before anyone had a chance to change it.

Recent Challenges

It’s possible this was why his form started to decline the time he achieved top ranking. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he stopped trusting his signature shot, got trapped on the crease and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s connected really. Meanwhile his mentor, his coach, thinks a attention to shorter formats started to erode confidence in his alignment. Encouragingly: he’s now excluded from the one-day team.

Certainly it’s relevant, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an religious believer who thinks that this is all predetermined, who thus sees his job as one of accessing this state of flow, despite being puzzling it may look to the mortal of us.

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