🔗 Share this article

Marnus evenly coats butter on each surface of a slice of soft bread. “That’s essential,” he states as he lowers the lid of his toastie maker. “Perfect. Then you get it toasted on both sides.” He checks inside to reveal a perfectly browned of ideal crispiness, the gooey cheese happily bubbling away. “So this is the secret method,” he declares. At which point, he does something horrific and unspeakable.

By now, it’s clear a sense of disinterest is beginning to cover your eyes. The red lights of sportswriting pretension are going off. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne hit 160 for Queensland this week and is being feverishly talked up for an return to the Test side before the England-Australia contest.

You probably want to read more about cricket matters. But first – you now understand with frustration – you’re going to have to get through a section of wobbling whimsy about grilled cheese, plus an additional unnecessary part of self-referential analysis in the second person. You sigh again.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a dish and moves toward the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he states, “but I personally prefer the cold toastie. There, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, go for a hit, come back. Perfect. It’s ideal.”

On-Field Matters

Alright, here’s the main point. Shall we get the sports aspect out of the way first? Little treat for reading until now. And while there may still be six weeks until the initial match, Labuschagne’s century against the Tigers – his third in recent months in various games – feels quietly decisive.

We have an Aussie opening batsmen clearly missing performance and method, shown up by South Africa in the Test championship decider, shown up once more in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was dropped during that tour, but on a certain level you felt Australia were keen to restore him at the soonest moment. Now he appears to have given them the perfect excuse.

Here is a approach the team should follow. Khawaja has a single hundred in his past 44 innings. The young batsman looks not quite a first-innings batsman and closer to the attractive performer who might portray a cricketer in a Bollywood movie. No other options has shown convincing form. McSweeney looks finished. Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like dust or mold. Meanwhile their captain, the pace bowler, is injured and suddenly this appears as a unusually thin squad, missing command or stability, the kind of natural confidence that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a match begins.

Marnus’s Comeback

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 return structure to a shaky team. And we are advised this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne these days: a streamlined, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, less maniacally obsessed with technical minutiae. “I believe I have really simplified things,” he said after his century. “Not really too technical, just what I should score runs.”

Of course, this is doubted. In all likelihood this is a fresh image that exists entirely in Labuschagne’s own head: still constantly refining that technique from all day, going deeper into fundamentals than any player has attempted. Like basic approach? Marnus will take time in the training with coaches and video clips, exhaustively remoulding himself into the simplest player that has ever played. That’s the trait of the obsessed, and the trait that has always made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating sportsmen in the game.

Bigger Scene

Maybe before this very open historic rivalry, there is even a sort of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. In England we have a side for whom any kind of analysis, not to mention self-review, is a risky subject. Go with instinct. Stay in the moment. Smell the now.

For Australia you have a individual like Labuschagne, a individual completely dedicated with the sport and magnificently unbothered by others’ opinions, who observes cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who treats this absurd sport with exactly the level of absurd reverence it requires.

His method paid off. During his intense period – from the moment he strode out to substitute for an injured the senior batsman at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game more deeply. To reach it – through sheer intensity of will – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his time with Kent league cricket, colleagues noticed him on the morning of a game sitting on a park bench in a trance-like state, literally visualising all balls of his time at the crease. As per the analytics firm, during the early stages of his career a surprisingly high catches were dropped off his bat. Somehow Labuschagne had anticipated outcomes before fielders could respond to influence it.

Form Issues

Maybe 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. Furthermore – he stopped trusting his cover drive, got stuck in his crease and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s connected really. Meanwhile his mentor, his coach, reckons a attention to shorter formats started to undermine belief in his positioning. Encouragingly: he’s recently omitted from the ODI side.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an committed Christian who holds that this is all predetermined, who thus sees his task as one of accessing this state of flow, no matter how mysterious it may look to the mortal of us.

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