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The Australian batsman carefully spreads butter on each surface of a slice of plain 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 golden on each side.” He checks inside to reveal a golden square of ideal crispiness, the melted cheese happily melting inside. “Here’s the key technique,” he declares. At which point, he does something unexpected and strange.

Already, you may feel a sense of disinterest is beginning to cover your eyes. The red lights of elaborate writing are blinking intensely. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne scored 160 for Queensland Bulls this week and is being widely discussed for an national team comeback before the Ashes.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about cricket matters. But first – you now understand with frustration – you’re going to have to endure three paragraphs of wobbling whimsy 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 moves toward the fridge. “It’s uncommon,” he remarks, “but I genuinely enjoy the grilled sandwich chilled. Boom, in the fridge. You allow the cheese to set, go for a hit, come back. Alright. Toastie’s ready to go.”

Back to Cricket

Look, to cut to the chase. How about we cover the cricket bit initially? Little treat for reading until now. And while there may only be six weeks until the initial match, Labuschagne’s hundred against the Tigers – his third this season in various games – feels significantly impactful.

This is an Australian top order clearly missing form and structure, shown up by the Proteas in the Test championship decider, exposed again in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was dropped during that series, but on a certain level you gathered Australia were eager to bring him back at the first opportunity. Now he looks to have given them the right opportunity.

And this is a strategy Australia must implement. The opener has just one 100 in his past 44 innings. Sam Konstas looks not quite a first-innings batsman and more like the good-looking star who might play a Test opener in a Bollywood epic. No other options has presented a strong argument. McSweeney looks cooked. Marcus Harris is still surprisingly included, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their captain, the pace bowler, is injured and suddenly this appears as a unusually thin squad, lacking command or stability, the kind of built-in belief that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a game starts.

Labuschagne’s Return

Enter Marnus: a world No 1 Test batter as just two years ago, freshly dropped from the one-day team, the right person to restore order to a brittle empire. And we are told this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne now: a streamlined, back-to-basics Labuschagne, not as extremely focused with technical minutiae. “I feel like I’ve really stripped it back,” he said after his ton. “Less focused on technique, just what I should bat effectively.”

Naturally, nobody truly believes this. In all likelihood this is a rebrand that exists only in Labuschagne’s own head: still constantly refining that technique from morning to night, going further toward simplicity than any player has attempted. Like basic approach? Marnus will take time in the practice sessions with advisors and replays, exhaustively remoulding himself into the least technical batter that has ever existed. This is just the quality of the focused, and the trait that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating sportsmen in the game.

The Broader Picture

Perhaps before this very open England-Australia contest, there is even a kind of interesting contrast to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. For England we have a team for whom technical study, let alone self-analysis, is a risky subject. Feel the flavours. Be where the ball is. Live in the instant.

In the other corner you have a individual like Labuschagne, a man utterly absorbed with cricket and totally indifferent by public perception, who sees cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who approaches this quirky game with precisely the amount of absurd reverence it demands.

His method paid off. During his shamanic phase – from the instant he appeared to replace a concussed the senior batsman at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to through 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game more deeply. To reach it – through pure determination – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his stint in club cricket, fellow players saw him on the morning of a game positioned on a seat in a meditative condition, actually imagining every single ball of his batting stint. Per cricket statisticians, during the first few years of his career a statistically unfathomable number of chances were spilled from his batting. In some way Labuschagne had predicted events before fielders could respond to influence it.

Form Issues

Perhaps this was why his performance dipped 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 began doubting his cover drive, got trapped on the crease and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s part of the same issue. Meanwhile his trainer, D’Costa, believes a focus on white-ball cricket started to erode confidence in his positioning. Encouragingly: he’s just been dropped from the one-day team.

Certainly it’s relevant, too, that Labuschagne is a devoutly religious individual, an religious believer who holds that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his task as one of reaching this optimal zone, no matter how mysterious it may look to the rest of us.

This approach, to my mind, has always been the main point of difference between him and Smith, a inherently talented player