🔗 Share this article

The Australian batsman evenly coats butter on both sides of a slice of soft bread. “That’s essential,” he states as he closes the lid of his sandwich grill. “Perfect. Then you get it toasted on both sides.” He opens the grill to reveal a perfectly browned of delicious perfection, the melted cheese happily melting inside. “Here’s the secret method,” he declares. At which point, he does something horrific and unspeakable.

At this stage, I sense a sense of disinterest is beginning to appear in your eyes. The alarm bells of elaborate writing are blinking intensely. You’re probably aware that Labuschagne hit 160 for Queensland Bulls this week and is being widely discussed for an Australian Test recall before the Ashes.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about cricket matters. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to endure three paragraphs of wobbling whimsy about toasted sandwiches, plus an additional unnecessary part of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the direct address. You groan once more.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a plate and walks across the fridge. “Few try this,” he remarks, “but I personally prefer the grilled sandwich chilled. Boom, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, head to practice, come back. Boom. Sandwich is perfect.”

The Cricket Context

Look, let’s try it like this. Let’s address the cricket bit to begin with? Little treat for making it this far. And while there may be just six weeks until the initial match, Labuschagne’s 100 runs against the Tasmanian side – his third in recent months in all formats – feels importantly timed.

Here’s an Australian top order badly short of consistency and technique, exposed by the Proteas in the World Test Championship final, exposed again in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was left out during that trip, but on one hand you felt Australia were keen to restore him at the first opportunity. Now he seems to have given them the ideal reason.

Here is a approach the team should follow. The opener has a single hundred in his past 44 innings. Konstas looks hardly a Test match opener and closer to the good-looking star who might portray a cricketer in a Indian film. Other candidates has presented a strong argument. McSweeney looks finished. Marcus Harris is still oddly present, like unwanted guests. Meanwhile their leader, Cummins, is injured and suddenly this seems like a unusually thin squad, lacking command or stability, the kind of built-in belief that has often helped Australia dominate before a match begins.

The Batsman’s Revival

Step forward Marnus: a world No 1 Test batter as in the recent past, freshly dropped from the 50-over squad, the perfect character to restore order to a fragile lineup. And we are advised this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne currently: a pared-down, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, not as extremely focused with small details. “I feel like I’ve really cut out extras,” he said after his hundred. “Not really too technical, just what I need to score runs.”

Naturally, nobody truly believes this. Probably this is a new approach that exists just in Labuschagne’s own head: still endlessly adjusting that approach from all day, going deeper into fundamentals than anyone else would try. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will devote weeks in the nets with coaches and video clips, thoroughly reshaping his game into the simplest player that has ever played. This is just the trait of the obsessed, and the trait that has long made Labuschagne one of the highly engaging cricketers in the cricket.

Bigger Scene

Maybe before this highly uncertain historic rivalry, there is even a type of interesting contrast to Labuschagne’s constant dedication. In England we have a team for whom technical study, let alone self-analysis, is a forbidden topic. Feel the flavours. Be where the ball is. Embrace the current.

For Australia you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a man terminally obsessed with the sport and totally indifferent by public perception, who finds cricket even in the gaps in the game, who handles this unusual pursuit with exactly the level of quirky respect it requires.

And it worked. During his focused era – from the instant he appeared to come in for a hurt Smith at the famous ground in 2019 to through 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed to see the game with greater insight. To reach it – through sheer intensity of will – on a elevated, strange, passionate tier. During his stint in English county cricket, fellow players saw him on the morning of a game sitting on a park bench in a focused mindset, actually imagining all balls of his batting stint. As per Cricviz, during the first few years of his career a surprisingly high proportion of catches were dropped off his bat. Remarkably Labuschagne had anticipated outcomes before anyone had a chance to influence it.

Current Struggles

Perhaps this was why his performance dipped the moment he reached the summit. There were no new heights to imagine, just a boundless, uncharted void before his eyes. Furthermore – he stopped trusting his favorite stroke, got trapped on the crease and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his mentor, Neil D’Costa, thinks a focus on white-ball cricket started to weaken assurance in his positioning. Encouragingly: he’s just been dropped from the one-day team.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an religious believer who holds that this is all predetermined, who thus sees his task as one of accessing this state of flow, despite being puzzling it may seem to the rest of us.

This mindset, to my mind, has always been the primary contrast between him and Steve Smith, a more naturally gifted player