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The Australian batsman evenly coats butter on the top and bottom of a slice of plain bread. “That’s the key,” he tells the camera as he lowers the lid of his grilled cheese press. “Perfect. Then you get it golden on both sides.” He lifts the lid to reveal a toasted delight of ideal crispiness, the melted cheese happily sizzling within. “Here’s the key technique,” he declares. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

At this stage, I sense a glaze of ennui is beginning to cover your eyes. The alarm bells of sportswriting pretension are blinking intensely. You’re likely conscious that Labuschagne made 160 runs for Queensland this week and is being feverishly talked up for an national team comeback before the Ashes series.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about cricket matters. But first – you now grasp with irritation – you’re going to have to endure three paragraphs of wobbling whimsy about toasted sandwiches, plus an additional unnecessary part of self-referential analysis in the second person. You sigh again.

Marnus transfers the sandwich on to a serving plate and moves toward the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he remarks, “but I personally prefer the toastie cold. Done, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, go for a hit, come back. Boom. It’s ideal.”

Back to Cricket

Look, let’s try it like this. Let’s address the cricket bit to begin with? Small reward for making it this far. And while there may still be six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s century against Tasmania – his third of the summer in various games – feels importantly timed.

We have an Australian top order seriously lacking form and structure, revealed against South Africa in the World Test Championship final, shown up once more in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was dropped during that tour, but on some level you gathered Australia were keen to restore him at the earliest chance. Now he looks to have given them the perfect excuse.

And this is a strategy Australia must implement. Usman Khawaja has a single hundred in his recent 44 batting efforts. Konstas looks not quite a Test opener and rather like the handsome actor who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood epic. None of the alternatives has presented a strong argument. One contender looks finished. Marcus Harris is still oddly present, like unwanted guests. Meanwhile their skipper, Pat Cummins, is injured and suddenly this appears as a surprisingly weak team, lacking strength or equilibrium, the kind of built-in belief that has often helped Australia dominate before a match begins.

Labuschagne’s Return

Here comes Labuschagne: a leading Test player as in the recent past, freshly dropped from the one-day team, the ideal candidate to restore order to a fragile lineup. And we are told this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne these days: a streamlined, no-frills Labuschagne, less intensely fixated with minor adjustments. “It seems I’ve really simplified things,” he said after his century. “Less focused on technique, just what I need to make runs.”

Clearly, this is doubted. In all likelihood this is a rebrand that exists just in Labuschagne’s personal view: still endlessly adjusting that technique from morning to night, going deeper into fundamentals than anyone has ever dared. You want less technical? Marnus will take time in the nets with trainers and footage, thoroughly reshaping his game into the most basic batsman that has ever been seen. This is just the quality of the focused, and the characteristic that has always made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating players in the sport.

Wider Context

Perhaps before this very open Ashes series, there is even a sort of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. On England’s side we have a team for whom detailed examination, let alone self-analysis, is a risky subject. Feel the flavours. Stay in the moment. Embrace the current.

In the other corner you have a individual like Labuschagne, a player utterly absorbed with the game and magnificently unbothered by who knows about it, who observes cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who handles this unusual pursuit with just the right measure of absurd reverence it requires.

His method paid off. During his focused era – from the instant he appeared to substitute for an injured the senior batsman at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to until late 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game with greater insight. 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 day of a match resting on a bench in a meditative condition, literally visualising every single ball of his innings. Per cricket statisticians, during the early stages of his career a statistically unfathomable catches were spilled from his batting. Somehow Labuschagne had predicted events before others could react to affect it.

Form Issues

Maybe this was why his performance dipped the time he achieved top ranking. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Additionally – he began doubting his signature shot, got unable to move forward and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s part of the same issue. Meanwhile his trainer, his coach, reckons a attention to shorter formats started to erode confidence in his positioning. Positive development: he’s just been dropped from the 50-over squad.

Surely it matters, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an evangelical Christian who believes that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his job as one of accessing this state of flow, despite being puzzling it may seem to the ordinary people.

This approach, to my mind, has consistently been the primary contrast between him and Steve Smith, a instinctive player