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The Australian batsman evenly coats butter on both sides of a slice of white bread. “That’s essential,” he tells the camera as he lowers the lid of his sandwich grill. “Boom. Then you get it crisp on each side.” He opens the grill to reveal a golden square of pure toasted goodness, the bubbling cheese happily bubbling away. “So this is the secret method,” he announces. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

At this stage, you may feel a glaze of ennui is beginning to form across your eyes. The red lights of elaborate writing are going off. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne scored 160 for his state team this week and is being feverishly talked up for an Australian Test recall before the Ashes series.

You probably want to read more about his performance. But first – you now grasp with irritation – you’re going to have to get through three paragraphs of light-hearted musing about grilled cheese, plus an additional unnecessary part of overly analytical commentary in the direct address. You groan once more.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a serving plate and heads over the fridge. “It’s uncommon,” he remarks, “but I personally prefer the toastie cold. Boom, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, go for a hit, come back. Boom. Sandwich is perfect.”

On-Field Matters

Look, here’s the main point. Shall we get the match details initially? Small reward for making it this far. And while there may be just six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s hundred against Tasmania – his third of the summer in all cricket – feels importantly timed.

This is an Australian top order seriously lacking form and structure, shown up by the Proteas in the Test championship decider, highlighted further in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was left out during that tour, but on some level you gathered Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the first opportunity. Now he seems to have given them the perfect excuse.

Here is a strategy Australia must implement. Usman Khawaja has just one 100 in his last 44 knocks. The young batsman looks hardly a Test match opener and closer to the handsome actor who might play a Test opener in a Bollywood epic. None of the alternatives has made a cogent case. McSweeney looks cooked. Marcus Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like dust or mold. Meanwhile their skipper, Pat Cummins, is injured and suddenly this appears as a weirdly lightweight side, missing command or stability, the kind of natural confidence that has often helped Australia dominate before a game starts.

Marnus’s Comeback

Here comes Labuschagne: a leading Test player as recently as 2023, freshly dropped from the 50-over squad, the right person to bring stability to a brittle empire. And we are informed this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne currently: a simplified, no-frills Labuschagne, not as maniacally obsessed with technical minutiae. “I feel like I’ve really simplified things,” he said after his century. “Less focused on technique, just what I need to score runs.”

Naturally, few accept this. Most likely this is a new approach that exists entirely in Labuschagne’s mind: still furiously stripping down that technique from dawn to dusk, going more back to basics than anyone has ever dared. You want less technical? Marnus will devote weeks in the nets with coaches and video clips, exhaustively remoulding himself into the most basic batsman that has ever existed. This is just the nature of the addict, and the trait that has long made Labuschagne one of the highly engaging cricketers in the game.

The Broader Picture

Maybe before this very open England-Australia contest, there is even a sort of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s constant dedication. On England’s side we have a team for whom detailed examination, let alone self-analysis, is a risky subject. Feel the flavours. Be where the ball is. Smell the now.

In the other corner you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a man terminally obsessed with cricket and totally indifferent by public perception, who sees cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who treats this absurd sport with exactly the level of odd devotion it deserves.

His method paid off. During his shamanic phase – from the time he walked out to substitute for an injured Steve Smith at Lord’s in 2019 to through 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed to see the game on another level. To access it – through absolute focus – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his days playing club cricket, colleagues noticed him on the game day positioned on a seat in a focused mindset, literally visualising every single ball of his innings. Per cricket statisticians, during the early stages of his career a statistically unfathomable catches were dropped off his bat. Somehow Labuschagne had predicted events before anyone had a chance to influence it.

Form Issues

Maybe this was why his career began to disintegrate the point he became number one. There were no new heights to imagine, just a boundless, uncharted void before his eyes. Additionally – he lost faith in his favorite stroke, got stuck in his crease and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s connected really. Meanwhile his coach, Neil D’Costa, thinks a attention to shorter formats started to weaken assurance in his positioning. Encouragingly: he’s just been dropped from the ODI side.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a strongly faithful person, an religious believer who thinks that this is all preordained, who thus sees his job as one of accessing this state of flow, however enigmatic and inexplicable it may appear to the rest of us.

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