🔗 Share this article

Labuschagne carefully spreads butter on both sides of a slice of white 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 crisp on each side.” He lifts the lid to reveal a toasted delight of ideal crispiness, the bubbling cheese happily melting inside. “So this is the secret method,” he declares. At which point, he does something unexpected and strange.

Already, I sense a layer of boredom is beginning to cover your eyes. The alarm bells of overly fancy prose are flashing wildly. You’re probably aware that Labuschagne hit 160 for Queensland this week and is being eagerly promoted for an Australian Test recall before the Ashes series.

You probably want to read more about that. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to endure a section of playful digression about toasted sandwiches, plus an extra unwanted bonus paragraph of self-referential analysis in the “you” perspective. You feel resigned.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a plate and heads over the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he states, “but I actually like the toastie cold. There, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, go for a hit, come back. Alright. It’s ideal.”

The Cricket Context

Okay, here’s the main point. Shall we get the cricket bit out of the way first? Small reward for making it this far. And while there may still be six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s 100 runs against Tasmania – his third in recent months in all formats – feels significantly impactful.

This is an Aussie opening batsmen seriously lacking form and structure, shown up by the South African team in the Test championship decider, exposed again in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was left out during that trip, but on a certain level you felt Australia were eager to bring him back at the first opportunity. Now he seems to have given them the ideal reason.

And this is a strategy Australia must implement. Khawaja has one century in his last 44 knocks. The young batsman looks less like a Test match opener and rather like the attractive performer who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood movie. No other options has shown convincing form. McSweeney looks out of form. Marcus Harris is still surprisingly included, like dust or mold. Meanwhile their skipper, Pat Cummins, is injured and suddenly this seems like a unusually thin squad, short of strength or equilibrium, the kind of built-in belief that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a match begins.

Marnus’s Comeback

Here comes Labuschagne: a top-ranked Test batsman as just two years ago, just left out from the ODI side, the perfect character to restore order to a brittle empire. And we are told this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne now: a streamlined, no-frills Labuschagne, not as intensely fixated with small details. “I believe I have really cut out extras,” he said after his ton. “Not really too technical, just what I must bat effectively.”

Clearly, this is doubted. Most likely this is a fresh image that exists just in Labuschagne’s own head: still furiously stripping down that approach from morning to night, going further toward simplicity than anyone has ever dared. You want less technical? Marnus will spend months in the training with trainers and footage, completely transforming into the simplest player that has ever been seen. That’s the trait of the obsessed, and the quality that has always made Labuschagne one of the most wildly absorbing sportsmen in the game.

The Broader Picture

Perhaps before this very open England-Australia contest, there is even a kind of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s constant dedication. For England we have a squad for whom detailed examination, especially personal critique, is a kind of dangerous taboo. Trust your gut. Stay in the moment. Live in the instant.

For Australia you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a player completely dedicated with cricket and wonderfully unconcerned by others’ opinions, who finds cricket even in the moments outside play, who handles this unusual pursuit with exactly the level of quirky respect it deserves.

And it worked. During his focused era – from the instant he appeared to replace a concussed Smith at the famous ground in 2019 to until late 2022 – Labuschagne was able 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 focused mindset, mentally rehearsing every single ball of his innings. As per Cricviz, during the early stages of his career a statistically unfathomable number of chances were spilled from his batting. Remarkably Labuschagne had predicted events before fielders could respond to affect it.

Recent Challenges

Maybe this was why his performance dipped the time he achieved top ranking. There were no new heights to imagine, just a empty space before his eyes. Additionally – he lost faith in his favorite stroke, got stuck in his crease and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s connected really. Meanwhile his mentor, his coach, believes a focus on white-ball cricket started to undermine belief in his positioning. Positive development: he’s just been dropped from the one-day team.

Surely it matters, too, that Labuschagne is a devoutly religious individual, an evangelical Christian who believes that this is all predetermined, who thus sees his job as one of achieving this peak performance, despite being puzzling it may seem to the rest of us.

This approach, to my mind, has long been the key distinction between him and Steve Smith, a inherently talented player