🔗 Share this article

Marnus methodically applies butter on each surface of a slice of white bread. “That’s essential,” he tells the camera as he closes the lid of his toastie maker. “There you go. Then you get it toasted on the outside.” He checks inside to reveal a golden square of delicious perfection, the bubbling cheese happily bubbling away. “And that’s the secret method,” he declares. At which point, he does something unexpected and strange.

By now, you may feel a layer of boredom is beginning to appear in your eyes. The warning signs of sportswriting pretension are blinking intensely. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne made 160 runs for Queensland this week and is being feverishly talked up for an Australian Test recall before the Ashes series.

You probably want to read more about cricket matters. But first – you now grasp with irritation – you’re going to have to sit through several lines of wobbling whimsy about toasted sandwiches, 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 plate and walks across the fridge. “It’s uncommon,” he remarks, “but I personally prefer the toastie cold. Done, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, go bat, come back. Alright. Sandwich is perfect.”

The Cricket Context

Look, let’s try it like this. Shall we get the cricket bit to begin with? Quick update for your patience. And while there may still be six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s hundred against Tasmania – his third in recent months in all cricket – feels quietly decisive.

We have an Australia top three clearly missing form and structure, revealed against the South African team in the World Test Championship final, highlighted further in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was omitted during that trip, but on one hand you gathered Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the first opportunity. Now he seems to have given them the ideal reason.

Here is a strategy Australia must implement. The opener has just one 100 in his past 44 innings. Konstas looks not quite a Test match opener and closer to the good-looking star who might portray a cricketer in a Bollywood movie. None of the alternatives has made a cogent case. McSweeney looks cooked. Harris is still oddly present, like unwanted guests. Meanwhile their leader, Cummins, is unfit and suddenly this feels like a weirdly lightweight side, lacking authority or balance, the kind of natural confidence that has often given Australia a lead before a ball is bowled.

The Batsman’s Revival

Step forward Marnus: a top-ranked Test batsman as just two years ago, just left out from the 50-over squad, the perfect character to restore order to a brittle empire. And we are told this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne currently: a pared-down, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, not as maniacally obsessed with small details. “I feel like I’ve really stripped it back,” he said after his hundred. “Not really too technical, just what I need to score runs.”

Clearly, few accept this. Probably this is a rebrand that exists entirely in Labuschagne’s own head: still furiously stripping down that approach from all day, going deeper into fundamentals than any player has attempted. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will spend months in the training with trainers and footage, exhaustively remoulding himself into the least technical batter that has ever been seen. This is just the trait of the obsessed, and the quality that has long made Labuschagne one of the most wildly absorbing players in the game.

The Broader Picture

Maybe before this inscrutably unpredictable Ashes series, there is even a kind of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s endless focus. In England we have a squad for whom technical study, especially personal critique, is a kind of dangerous taboo. Trust your gut. Stay in the moment. Embrace the current.

In the other corner you have a individual like Labuschagne, a player completely dedicated with cricket and totally indifferent by who knows about it, who observes cricket even in the moments outside play, who treats this absurd sport with precisely the amount of absurd reverence it deserves.

This approach succeeded. During his shamanic phase – from the instant he appeared to substitute for an injured Smith at Lord’s in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne was able to see the game on another level. To access it – through sheer intensity of will – on a elevated, strange, passionate tier. During his stint in English county cricket, colleagues noticed him on the morning of a game resting on a bench in a meditative condition, mentally rehearsing every single ball of his time at the crease. According to Cricviz, during the early stages of his career a surprisingly high catches were spilled from his batting. Somehow Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before fielders could respond to change it.

Form Issues

Perhaps this was why his performance dipped the point he became number one. There were no new heights to imagine, just a empty space before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he stopped trusting his signature shot, got unable to move forward and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s connected really. Meanwhile his trainer, his coach, thinks a focus on white-ball cricket started to weaken assurance in his technique. Positive development: he’s just been dropped from the 50-over squad.

Surely it matters, too, that Labuschagne is a devoutly religious individual, an evangelical Christian who thinks that this is all preordained, who thus sees his task as one of achieving this peak performance, despite being puzzling it may appear to the mortal of us.

This mindset, to my mind, has always been the key distinction between him and Smith, a inherently talented player