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The Australian batsman evenly coats butter on each surface of a slice of soft bread. “That’s essential,” he explains as he brings down the lid of his toastie maker. “Perfect. Then you get it golden on both sides.” He checks inside to reveal a perfectly browned of delicious perfection, the gooey cheese happily melting inside. “And that’s the key technique,” he declares. At which point, he does something horrific and unspeakable.

Already, it’s clear a sense of disinterest is beginning to form across your eyes. The alarm bells of overly fancy prose are flashing wildly. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne hit 160 for Queensland this week and is being widely discussed for an Australian Test recall before the Ashes.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about cricket matters. 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 extra unwanted bonus paragraph of overly analytical commentary in the “you” perspective. You sigh again.

He turns the sandwich on to a plate and moves toward the fridge. “It’s uncommon,” he announces, “but I personally prefer the cold toastie. Boom, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, go bat, come back. Alright. Sandwich is perfect.”

Back to Cricket

Look, to cut to the chase. Let’s address the sports aspect initially? Quick update for reading until now. And while there may be just six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s hundred against Tasmania – his third this season in all formats – feels significantly impactful.

Here’s an Australia top three seriously lacking consistency and technique, revealed against the Proteas in the WTC final, shown up once more in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was dropped during that tour, but on one hand you gathered Australia were keen to restore him at the soonest moment. Now he appears to have given them the ideal reason.

And this is a plan that Australia need to work. Khawaja has a single hundred in his past 44 innings. The young batsman looks hardly a Test opener and closer to the handsome actor who might portray a cricketer in a Bollywood movie. Other candidates has made a cogent case. McSweeney looks cooked. Harris is still oddly present, like dust or mold. Meanwhile their captain, the pace bowler, is injured and suddenly this appears as a surprisingly weak team, lacking authority or balance, the kind of built-in belief that has often given Australia a lead before a match begins.

The Batsman’s Revival

Step forward Marnus: a world No 1 Test batter as recently as 2023, freshly dropped from the 50-over squad, the right person to bring stability to a fragile lineup. And we are told this is a composed and reflective Labuschagne these days: a pared-down, back-to-basics Labuschagne, no longer as intensely fixated with technical minutiae. “I feel like I’ve really stripped it back,” he said after his ton. “Not overthinking, just what I need to bat effectively.”

Clearly, this is doubted. Probably this is a new approach that exists entirely in Labuschagne’s personal view: still furiously stripping down that method from all day, going deeper into fundamentals than anyone else would try. Like basic approach? Marnus will devote weeks in the nets with trainers and footage, exhaustively remoulding himself into the most basic batsman that has ever been seen. That’s the nature of the addict, and the characteristic that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating players in the sport.

Wider Context

Perhaps before this inscrutably unpredictable Ashes series, there is even a type of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s constant dedication. On England’s side we have a team for whom any kind of analysis, especially personal critique, is a risky subject. Go with instinct. Focus on the present. Embrace the current.

In the other corner you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a player completely dedicated with cricket and totally indifferent by public perception, who observes cricket even in the moments outside play, who approaches this quirky game with just the right measure of absurd reverence it demands.

And it worked. During his shamanic phase – from the time he walked out to replace a concussed the senior batsman at Lord’s in 2019 to through 2022 – Labuschagne was able to see the game with greater insight. To reach it – through pure determination – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his time with English county cricket, teammates would find him on the morning of a game positioned on a seat in a trance-like state, actually imagining each delivery of his time at the crease. Per Cricviz, during the initial period of his career a statistically unfathomable catches were dropped off his bat. In some way Labuschagne had predicted events before anyone had a chance to change it.

Recent Challenges

It’s possible this was why his form started to decline the point he became number one. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a unknown territory 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 all the same thing. Meanwhile his trainer, Neil D’Costa, thinks a focus on white-ball cricket started to weaken assurance in his positioning. Encouragingly: he’s now excluded 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 basically written out in advance, who thus sees his job as one of accessing this state of flow, however enigmatic and inexplicable it may look to the rest of us.

This approach, to my mind, has long been the key distinction between him and Steve Smith, a instinctive player