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Marnus evenly coats butter on each surface of a slice of white bread. “That’s the secret,” he explains as he lowers the lid of his toastie maker. “There you go. Then you get it crisp on each side.” He checks inside to reveal a golden square of ideal crispiness, the gooey cheese happily bubbling away. “Here’s the key technique,” he announces. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

At this stage, it’s clear a layer of boredom is beginning to appear in your eyes. The alarm bells of sportswriting pretension are going off. You’re probably aware that Labuschagne made 160 runs for Queensland Bulls this week and is being eagerly promoted for an return to the Test side before the Ashes.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about that. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to endure a section of wobbling whimsy about toasties, plus an additional unnecessary part of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the direct address. You feel resigned.

He turns the sandwich on to a plate and heads over the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he announces, “but I personally prefer the grilled sandwich chilled. Done, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, go for a hit, come back. Alright. Sandwich is perfect.”

Back to Cricket

Okay, to cut to the chase. How about we cover the match details initially? Quick update for reading until now. And while there may be just six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s century against Tasmania – his third this season in all cricket – feels importantly timed.

Here’s an Australia top three badly short of consistency and technique, shown up by the South African team in the WTC final, shown up once more in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was omitted during that trip, but on some level you gathered Australia were keen to restore him at the earliest chance. Now he seems to have given them the perfect excuse.

And this is a plan that Australia need to work. Usman Khawaja has just one 100 in his last 44 knocks. Sam Konstas looks not quite a Test match opener and more like the attractive performer who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood epic. Other candidates has presented a strong argument. McSweeney looks finished. Harris is still oddly present, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their captain, the pace bowler, is unfit and suddenly this seems like a surprisingly weak team, lacking authority or balance, the kind of natural confidence that has often helped Australia dominate before a ball is bowled.

Marnus’s Comeback

Here comes Labuschagne: a top-ranked Test batsman as just two years ago, freshly dropped from the ODI side, the ideal candidate to restore order to a shaky team. And we are told this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne currently: a pared-down, back-to-basics Labuschagne, no longer as intensely fixated with technical minutiae. “I believe I have really simplified things,” he said after his century. “Not overthinking, just what I should make runs.”

Naturally, nobody truly believes this. Most likely this is a fresh image that exists only in Labuschagne’s personal view: still furiously stripping down that method from dawn to dusk, going deeper into fundamentals than any player has attempted. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will spend months in the nets with trainers and footage, exhaustively remoulding himself into the most basic batsman that has ever existed. This is simply the trait of the obsessed, and the characteristic that has always made Labuschagne one of the highly engaging cricketers in the sport.

Wider Context

Perhaps before this highly uncertain historic rivalry, there is even a kind of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s constant dedication. On England’s side we have a side for whom any kind of analysis, especially personal critique, is a risky subject. Trust your gut. Focus on the present. Smell the now.

For Australia you have a player such as Labuschagne, a individual completely dedicated with the sport and totally indifferent by who knows about it, who observes cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who treats this absurd sport with just the right measure of absurd reverence it deserves.

His method paid off. During his focused era – from the instant he appeared to come in for a hurt Steve Smith at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to through 2022 – Labuschagne was able to see the game with greater insight. To access it – through pure determination – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his days playing club cricket, teammates would find him on the morning of a game sitting on a park bench in a focused mindset, actually imagining each delivery of his batting stint. As per the analytics firm, during the first few years of his career a statistically unfathomable number of chances were dropped off his bat. Somehow Labuschagne had predicted events before others could react to change it.

Current Struggles

Maybe this was why his performance dipped the point he became number one. There were no further goals to picture, just a empty space before his eyes. Additionally – he began doubting 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 coach, Neil D’Costa, reckons a focus on white-ball cricket started to erode confidence in his technique. Positive development: he’s just been dropped from the ODI side.

Certainly it’s relevant, too, that Labuschagne is a devoutly religious individual, an committed Christian who believes that this is all preordained, who thus sees his task as one of accessing this state of flow, despite being puzzling it may appear to the mortal of us.

This mindset, to my mind, has long been the key distinction between him and Steve Smith, a more naturally gifted player