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Marnus methodically applies butter on the top and bottom of a slice of soft bread. “That’s the key,” he explains as he brings down the lid of his toastie maker. “Perfect. Then you get it toasted on both sides.” He lifts the lid to reveal a perfectly browned of ideal crispiness, the melted cheese happily sizzling within. “Here’s the secret method,” he explains. At which point, he does something unexpected and strange.

Already, I sense a layer of boredom is beginning to cover your eyes. The alarm bells of overly fancy prose are going off. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne scored 160 for Queensland this week and is being feverishly talked up for an return to the Test side before the Ashes.

You probably want to read more about that. But first – you now grasp with irritation – you’re going to have to sit through several lines of light-hearted musing about toasties, plus an further tangential section of self-referential analysis in the direct address. You sigh again.

He turns the sandwich on to a serving plate and moves toward the fridge. “It’s uncommon,” he states, “but I genuinely enjoy the toastie cold. Done, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, head to practice, come back. Perfect. It’s ideal.”

Back to Cricket

Alright, here’s the main point. Let’s address the cricket bit initially? Small reward for reading until now. And while there may only be six weeks until the initial match, Labuschagne’s hundred against the Tasmanian side – his third in recent months in various games – feels quietly decisive.

This is an Australian top order badly short of performance and method, revealed against the South African team in the Test championship decider, highlighted further in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was omitted during that series, but on some level you felt Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the earliest chance. Now he looks to have given them the ideal reason.

This represents a strategy Australia must implement. Khawaja has one century in his past 44 innings. The young batsman looks less like a Test match opener and closer to the handsome actor who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood epic. Other candidates has made a cogent case. McSweeney looks finished. Harris is still oddly present, like unwanted guests. Meanwhile their leader, the pace bowler, is unfit and suddenly this seems like a unusually thin squad, short of authority or balance, the kind of natural confidence that has often given Australia a lead before a ball is bowled.

Labuschagne’s Return

Here comes Labuschagne: a top-ranked Test batsman as in the recent past, freshly dropped from the one-day team, the ideal candidate to return structure to a brittle empire. And we are told this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne currently: a pared-down, no-frills Labuschagne, not as maniacally obsessed with minor adjustments. “It seems I’ve really stripped it back,” he said after his hundred. “Not really too technical, just what I need to score runs.”

Of course, few accept this. Most likely this is a rebrand that exists just in Labuschagne’s own head: still endlessly adjusting that technique from morning to night, going further toward simplicity than anyone else would try. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will devote weeks in the practice sessions with advisors and replays, exhaustively remoulding himself into the most basic batsman that has ever been seen. This is just the quality of the focused, and the trait that has always made Labuschagne one of the most wildly absorbing sportsmen in the game.

Bigger Scene

Perhaps before this highly uncertain Ashes series, there is even a kind of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s endless focus. In England we have a team for whom technical study, not to mention self-review, is a forbidden topic. Feel the flavours. Focus on the present. Live in the instant.

In the other corner you have a player such as Labuschagne, a man utterly absorbed with cricket and magnificently unbothered by public perception, who sees cricket even in the moments outside play, who approaches this quirky game with exactly the level of odd devotion it deserves.

This approach succeeded. During his intense period – from the time he walked out to substitute for an injured Smith at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to through 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game more deeply. To reach it – through absolute focus – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his stint in Kent league cricket, teammates would find him on the morning of a game positioned on a seat in a focused mindset, literally visualising every single ball of his time at the crease. Per cricket statisticians, during the initial period of his career a surprisingly high number of chances were dropped off his bat. In some way Labuschagne had anticipated outcomes before anyone had a chance to affect it.

Current Struggles

It’s possible this was why his performance dipped the moment he reached the summit. There were no new heights to imagine, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he lost faith in his favorite stroke, got stuck in his crease and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his mentor, D’Costa, believes a attention to shorter formats started to weaken assurance in his alignment. Good news: he’s recently omitted from the one-day team.

Certainly it’s relevant, too, that Labuschagne is a strongly faithful person, an evangelical Christian who holds that this is all predetermined, who thus sees his role as one of achieving this peak performance, however enigmatic and inexplicable it may look to the rest of us.

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