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Marnus methodically applies butter on each surface of a slice of white bread. “That’s the key,” he tells the camera as he brings down the lid of his sandwich grill. “Perfect. Then you get it crisp on both sides.” He checks inside to reveal a toasted delight of delicious perfection, the gooey cheese happily bubbling away. “Here’s the trick of the trade,” he declares. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

By now, I sense a sense of disinterest is beginning to appear in your eyes. The warning signs of elaborate writing are blinking intensely. You’re likely conscious that Labuschagne scored 160 for Queensland Bulls this week and is being widely discussed for an national team comeback before the Ashes.

You probably want to read more about cricket matters. But first – you now grasp with irritation – you’re going to have to get through three paragraphs of playful digression about toasties, plus an further tangential section of self-referential analysis in the second person. You groan once more.

He turns the sandwich on to a serving plate and walks across the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he remarks, “but I genuinely enjoy the grilled sandwich chilled. Boom, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, go for a hit, come back. Perfect. Toastie’s ready to go.”

The Cricket Context

Okay, here’s the main point. How about we cover the sports aspect out of the way first? Little treat for your patience. And while there may only be six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s century against Tasmania – his third of the summer in all cricket – feels importantly timed.

This is an Australian top order clearly missing consistency and technique, shown up by South Africa in the Test championship decider, highlighted further in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was dropped during that tour, but on some level you gathered Australia were keen to restore him at the soonest moment. Now he seems to have given them the ideal reason.

And this is a approach the team should follow. The opener has a single hundred in his recent 44 batting efforts. Sam Konstas looks hardly a Test opener and rather like the attractive performer who might play a Test opener in a Bollywood movie. No other options has presented a strong argument. One contender looks out of form. Harris is still oddly present, like dust or mold. Meanwhile their leader, the pace bowler, is unfit and suddenly this seems like a unusually thin squad, short of command or stability, the kind of built-in belief that has often given Australia a lead before a match begins.

Labuschagne’s Return

Enter Marnus: a leading Test player as in the recent past, recently omitted from the one-day team, the perfect character to bring stability to a shaky team. And we are told this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne currently: a pared-down, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, not as extremely focused with minor adjustments. “I believe I have really simplified things,” he said after his ton. “Less focused on technique, just what I must make runs.”

Of course, nobody truly believes this. Most likely this is a new approach that exists only in Labuschagne’s mind: still furiously stripping down that approach from all day, going more back to basics than anyone has ever dared. Like basic approach? Marnus will take time in the training with advisors and replays, thoroughly reshaping his game into the least technical batter that has ever existed. This is simply the quality of the focused, and the trait that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the highly engaging cricketers in the cricket.

The Broader Picture

It could be before this inscrutably unpredictable England-Australia contest, there is even a kind of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. For England we have a team for whom detailed examination, not to mention self-review, is a forbidden topic. Go with instinct. Focus on the present. Embrace the current.

For Australia you have a player such as Labuschagne, a individual terminally obsessed with the game and wonderfully unconcerned by who knows about it, who finds cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who treats this absurd sport with just the right measure of quirky respect it requires.

His method paid off. During his intense period – from the instant he appeared to come in for a hurt Steve Smith at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to through 2022 – Labuschagne was able to see the game on another level. To reach it – through absolute focus – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his time with English county cricket, colleagues noticed him on the day of a match positioned on a seat in a focused mindset, actually imagining all balls of his innings. According to the analytics firm, during the initial period of his career a unusually large number of chances were dropped off his bat. In some way Labuschagne had predicted events before anyone had a chance to affect it.

Form Issues

It’s possible this was why his performance dipped the moment he reached the summit. There were no further goals to picture, just a boundless, uncharted void before his eyes. Additionally – he stopped trusting his signature shot, got unable to move forward and seemed to misjudge his positioning. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his coach, his coach, thinks a focus on white-ball cricket started to undermine belief in his technique. Good news: he’s now excluded from the ODI side.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a devoutly religious individual, an committed Christian who holds that this is all predetermined, who thus sees his role as one of achieving this peak performance, despite being puzzling it may appear to the rest of us.

This, to my mind, has consistently been the key distinction between him and Smith, a instinctive player