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The Australian batsman evenly coats butter on both sides of a slice of soft bread. “That’s the key,” he tells the camera as he closes the lid of his toastie maker. “Perfect. Then you get it toasted on each side.” He opens the grill to reveal a perfectly browned of delicious perfection, the gooey cheese happily bubbling away. “And that’s the trick of the trade,” he explains. At which point, he does something unexpected and strange.

At this stage, you may feel a layer of boredom is beginning to form across your eyes. The alarm bells of elaborate writing are flashing wildly. You’re likely conscious that Labuschagne hit 160 for Queensland Bulls this week and is being eagerly promoted for an national team comeback before the Ashes.

You probably want to read more about cricket matters. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to get through several lines of playful digression about toasties, plus an additional unnecessary part of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the second person. 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 genuinely enjoy the grilled sandwich chilled. Boom, in the fridge. You allow the cheese to set, head to practice, come back. Boom. It’s ideal.”

Back to Cricket

Look, here’s the main point. Let’s address the sports aspect initially? Little treat for reading until now. And while there may only be six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s century against the Tigers – his third of the summer in all cricket – feels significantly impactful.

This is an Aussie opening batsmen badly short of form and structure, shown up by the South African team in the Test championship decider, exposed again in the West Indies after that. Labuschagne was dropped during that series, but on one hand you sensed Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the earliest chance. Now he seems to have given them the perfect excuse.

Here is a strategy Australia must implement. Usman Khawaja has one century in his past 44 innings. The young batsman looks hardly a first-innings batsman and rather like the handsome actor who might portray a cricketer in a Indian film. None of the alternatives has presented a strong argument. One contender looks out of form. Another option is still surprisingly included, like unwanted guests. Meanwhile their skipper, the pace bowler, is hurt and suddenly this feels like a weirdly lightweight side, missing command or stability, the kind of natural confidence that has often helped Australia dominate before a ball is bowled.

Labuschagne’s Return

Step forward Marnus: a top-ranked Test batsman as just two years ago, just left out from the 50-over squad, the ideal candidate to restore order to a shaky team. And we are informed this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne these days: a simplified, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, less intensely fixated with technical minutiae. “I feel like I’ve really cut out extras,” he said after his century. “Not really too technical, just what I must make runs.”

Of course, this is doubted. Probably this is a new approach that exists just in Labuschagne’s own head: still constantly refining that technique from dawn to dusk, going further toward simplicity than any player has attempted. Like basic approach? Marnus will take time in the practice sessions with advisors and replays, completely transforming into the most basic batsman that has ever existed. This is just the quality of the focused, and the trait that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the most wildly absorbing cricketers in the sport.

The Broader Picture

It could be before this very open England-Australia contest, there is even a kind of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s endless focus. For England we have a side for whom any kind of analysis, let alone self-analysis, is a forbidden topic. Trust your gut. Focus on the present. Embrace the current.

On the opposite side you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a man utterly absorbed with the game and wonderfully unconcerned by others’ opinions, who observes cricket even in the gaps in the game, who approaches this quirky game with precisely the amount of odd devotion it demands.

And it worked. During his focused era – from the time he walked out to substitute for an injured the senior batsman at the famous ground in 2019 to through 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game with greater insight. To access it – through pure determination – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his days playing English county cricket, fellow players saw him on the game day positioned on a seat in a trance-like state, literally visualising every single ball of his innings. According to Cricviz, during the first few years of his career a unusually large proportion of catches were dropped off his bat. Remarkably Labuschagne had predicted events before fielders could respond to affect it.

Form Issues

Perhaps this was why his form started to decline the time he achieved top ranking. There were no further goals to picture, just a boundless, uncharted void before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he began doubting his signature shot, got unable to move forward and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his mentor, his coach, believes a focus on white-ball cricket started to erode confidence in his alignment. Good news: he’s now excluded from the 50-over squad.

Surely it matters, too, that Labuschagne is a devoutly religious individual, an evangelical Christian who holds that this is all preordained, who thus sees his role as one of achieving this peak performance, however enigmatic and inexplicable it may seem to the rest of us.

This approach, to my mind, has long been the key distinction between him and the other batsman, a more naturally gifted player