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The Australian batsman evenly coats butter on the top and bottom of a slice of plain bread. “That’s essential,” he tells the camera as he lowers the lid of his sandwich grill. “Boom. Then you get it toasted on both sides.” He checks inside to reveal a golden square of ideal crispiness, the melted cheese happily melting inside. “And that’s the key technique,” he explains. At which point, he does something horrific and unspeakable.

At this stage, I sense a glaze of ennui is beginning to appear in your eyes. The red lights of sportswriting pretension are going off. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne scored 160 for Queensland Bulls this week and is being feverishly talked up for an Australian Test recall before the Ashes.

You likely wish to read more about that. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to endure several lines of playful digression about toasties, plus an extra unwanted bonus paragraph of self-referential analysis in the “you” perspective. You groan once more.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a dish and heads over the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he announces, “but I genuinely enjoy the grilled sandwich chilled. Boom, in the fridge. You allow the cheese to set, head to practice, come back. Alright. Sandwich is perfect.”

Back to Cricket

Okay, let’s try it like this. Let’s address the cricket bit out of the way first? Small reward for your patience. And while there may only be six weeks until the initial match, Labuschagne’s century against Tasmania – his third of the summer in various games – feels importantly timed.

This is an Australian top order clearly missing consistency and technique, shown up by South Africa in the WTC final, highlighted further in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was left out during that tour, but on one hand you felt Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the soonest moment. Now he looks to have given them the ideal reason.

This represents a approach the team should follow. The opener has just one 100 in his past 44 innings. The young batsman looks not quite a Test match opener and closer to the good-looking star who might play a Test opener in a Bollywood epic. Other candidates has made a cogent case. One contender looks cooked. Marcus Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like unwanted guests. Meanwhile their skipper, Cummins, is unfit and suddenly this feels like a surprisingly weak team, lacking authority or balance, the kind of built-in belief that has often given Australia a lead before a match begins.

Marnus’s Comeback

Enter Marnus: a world No 1 Test batter as recently as 2023, recently omitted from the 50-over squad, the right person to return structure to a brittle empire. And we are told this is a composed and reflective Labuschagne now: a streamlined, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, no longer as extremely focused with minor adjustments. “It seems I’ve really cut out extras,” he said after his ton. “Less focused on technique, just what I need to bat effectively.”

Clearly, few accept this. Probably this is a new approach that exists only in Labuschagne’s mind: still endlessly adjusting that approach from all day, going more back to basics than anyone has ever dared. You want less technical? Marnus will devote weeks in the practice sessions with trainers and footage, completely transforming into the simplest player that has ever played. That’s the quality of the focused, and the quality that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating cricketers in the sport.

Wider Context

Maybe before this inscrutably unpredictable England-Australia contest, there is even a kind of interesting contrast to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. On England’s side we have a squad for whom detailed examination, especially personal critique, is a risky subject. Trust your gut. Be where the ball is. Smell the now.

On the opposite side you have a player such as Labuschagne, a individual terminally obsessed with cricket and totally indifferent by who knows about it, who finds cricket even in the moments outside play, who treats this absurd sport with precisely the amount of absurd reverence it deserves.

And it worked. During his shamanic phase – from the instant he appeared to come in for a hurt Smith at Lord’s in 2019 to through 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed to see the game with greater insight. To access it – through sheer intensity of will – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his days playing Kent league cricket, fellow players saw him on the day of a match sitting on a park bench in a trance-like state, actually imagining all balls of his batting stint. According to the analytics firm, during the first few years of his career a unusually large catches were dropped off his bat. Remarkably Labuschagne had anticipated outcomes before others could react to affect it.

Recent Challenges

Maybe this was why his career began to disintegrate the point he became number one. There were no new heights to imagine, just a empty space before his eyes. Furthermore – he began doubting his favorite stroke, got stuck in his crease and seemed to misjudge his positioning. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his mentor, Neil D’Costa, reckons a emphasis on limited-overs started to erode confidence in his technique. Encouragingly: he’s recently omitted from the one-day team.

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

This, to my mind, has consistently been the primary contrast between him and Smith, a inherently talented player