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The Australian batsman evenly coats butter on both sides of a slice of plain bread. “That’s the key,” he explains as he brings down the lid of his toastie maker. “There you go. Then you get it toasted on each side.” He checks inside to reveal a perfectly browned of ideal crispiness, the bubbling cheese happily melting inside. “Here’s the secret method,” he explains. At which point, he does something unexpected and strange.

By now, I sense a sense of disinterest is beginning to appear in your eyes. The red lights of sportswriting pretension are blinking intensely. You’re probably aware that Labuschagne scored 160 for his state team 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 playful digression about toasties, plus an extra unwanted bonus paragraph of self-referential analysis in the “you” perspective. You sigh again.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a plate and moves toward the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he remarks, “but I genuinely enjoy the grilled sandwich chilled. There, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, go bat, come back. Perfect. It’s ideal.”

The Cricket Context

Look, let’s try it like this. Let’s address the sports aspect to begin with? Little treat for making it this far. And while there may be just six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s hundred against Tasmania – his third of the summer in all formats – feels importantly timed.

We have an Australia top three badly short of consistency and technique, revealed against South Africa in the World Test Championship final, exposed again in the West Indies after that. Labuschagne was dropped during that trip, but on one hand you gathered Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the soonest moment. Now he looks to have given them the perfect excuse.

This represents a approach the team should follow. Usman Khawaja has just one 100 in his recent 44 batting efforts. Sam Konstas looks not quite a Test match opener and more like the good-looking star who might act as a batsman in a Indian film. Other candidates has shown convincing form. McSweeney looks finished. Harris is still oddly present, like unwanted guests. Meanwhile their captain, Pat Cummins, is unfit and suddenly this feels like a unusually thin squad, lacking strength or equilibrium, the kind of effortless self-assurance that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a ball is bowled.

Marnus’s Comeback

Step forward Marnus: a world No 1 Test batter as just two years ago, recently omitted from the ODI side, the perfect character to restore order to a shaky team. And we are informed this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne currently: a pared-down, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, no longer as extremely focused with technical minutiae. “It seems I’ve really stripped it back,” he said after his ton. “Less focused on technique, just what I need to make runs.”

Of course, few accept this. Probably this is a fresh image that exists just in Labuschagne’s mind: still furiously stripping down that method from dawn to dusk, going further toward simplicity than any player has attempted. You want less technical? Marnus will spend months in the practice sessions with trainers and footage, thoroughly reshaping his game into the most basic batsman that has ever been seen. This is just the nature of the addict, and the quality that has always made Labuschagne one of the highly engaging players in the cricket.

The Broader Picture

It could be before this highly uncertain historic rivalry, there is even a kind of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s constant dedication. On England’s side we have a squad for whom technical study, not to mention self-review, is a risky subject. Feel the flavours. Be where the ball is. Smell the now.

In the other corner you have a individual like Labuschagne, a individual utterly absorbed with the sport and magnificently unbothered by public perception, who observes cricket even in the moments outside play, who handles this unusual pursuit with exactly the level of absurd reverence it deserves.

And it worked. During his focused era – from the moment he strode out to come in for a hurt Steve Smith at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed to see the game with greater insight. To access it – through absolute focus – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his days playing club cricket, fellow players saw him on the game day positioned on a seat in a meditative condition, actually imagining every single ball of his batting stint. According to the analytics firm, during the first few years of his career a surprisingly high catches were spilled from his batting. Remarkably Labuschagne had predicted events before others could react to influence it.

Form Issues

Perhaps this was why his career began to disintegrate the moment he reached the summit. There were no new heights to imagine, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Furthermore – he lost faith in his cover drive, got unable to move forward and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s part of the same issue. Meanwhile his trainer, D’Costa, thinks a emphasis on limited-overs started to weaken assurance in his technique. Positive development: he’s recently omitted from the ODI side.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an committed Christian who thinks 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 mortal of us.

This mindset, to my mind, has long been the main point of difference between him and the other batsman, a instinctive player