🔗 Share this article

The Australian batsman carefully spreads butter on the top and bottom of a slice of plain bread. “That’s the key,” he explains as he closes the lid of his grilled cheese press. “There you go. Then you get it crisp on both sides.” He opens the grill to reveal a perfectly browned of pure toasted goodness, the gooey cheese happily bubbling away. “And that’s the key technique,” he declares. At which point, he does something horrific and unspeakable.

At this stage, I sense a layer of boredom is beginning to form across your eyes. The warning signs of sportswriting pretension are blinking intensely. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne scored 160 for his state team this week and is being feverishly talked up for an national team comeback before the England-Australia contest.

You likely wish to read more about his performance. But first – you now understand with frustration – you’re going to have to get through several lines of wobbling whimsy about toasted sandwiches, plus an extra unwanted bonus paragraph of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the second person. You feel resigned.

He turns the sandwich on to a dish and walks across the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he announces, “but I genuinely enjoy the cold toastie. There, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, go bat, come back. Boom. Sandwich is perfect.”

On-Field Matters

Alright, here’s the main point. Shall we get the match details to begin with? Little treat for your patience. And while there may still be six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s century against Tasmania – his third this season in all cricket – feels importantly timed.

This is an Aussie opening batsmen seriously lacking consistency and technique, shown up by the Proteas in the World Test Championship final, shown up once more in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was left out during that series, but on a certain level you sensed Australia were keen to restore him at the first opportunity. Now he seems to have given them the right opportunity.

This represents a strategy Australia must implement. The opener has just one 100 in his last 44 knocks. Sam Konstas looks less like a Test match opener and rather like the attractive performer who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood movie. None of the alternatives has shown convincing form. McSweeney looks finished. Harris is still oddly present, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their skipper, Cummins, is injured and suddenly this appears as a unusually thin squad, short of authority or balance, 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 restore order to a brittle empire. And we are told this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne these days: a streamlined, back-to-basics Labuschagne, not as maniacally obsessed with technical minutiae. “It seems I’ve really simplified things,” he said after his ton. “Not really too technical, just what I need to make runs.”

Of course, this is doubted. Most likely this is a rebrand that exists just in Labuschagne’s mind: still constantly refining that approach from all day, going further toward simplicity than any player has attempted. You want less technical? Marnus will take time in the practice sessions with advisors and replays, thoroughly reshaping his game into the least technical batter that has ever existed. This is just the trait of the obsessed, and the characteristic that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating cricketers in the game.

Wider Context

Perhaps before this inscrutably unpredictable England-Australia contest, there is even a type of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s endless focus. On England’s side we have a squad for whom detailed examination, let alone self-analysis, is a kind of dangerous taboo. Go with instinct. Stay in the moment. Smell the now.

For Australia you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a player completely dedicated with cricket and totally indifferent by who knows about it, who sees cricket even in the gaps in the game, who handles this unusual pursuit with exactly the level of absurd reverence it demands.

And it worked. During his focused era – from the time he walked out to substitute for an injured the senior batsman at Lord’s in 2019 to through 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game with greater insight. To tap into it – through absolute focus – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his time with English county cricket, teammates would find him on the day of a match sitting on a park bench in a trance-like state, actually imagining every single ball of his batting stint. As per cricket statisticians, during the initial period of his career a unusually large number of chances were missed when he batted. In some way Labuschagne had anticipated outcomes before anyone had a chance to affect it.

Form Issues

Perhaps this was why his form started to decline the moment he reached the summit. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a empty space before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he stopped trusting his signature shot, got stuck in his crease and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s part of the same issue. Meanwhile his trainer, D’Costa, thinks a emphasis on limited-overs started to undermine belief in his alignment. Encouragingly: he’s just been dropped from the one-day team.

Surely it matters, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an evangelical Christian who thinks that this is all predetermined, who thus sees his job as one of reaching this optimal zone, no matter how mysterious it may look to the rest of us.

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