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Labuschagne carefully spreads butter on the top and bottom of a slice of soft bread. “That’s essential,” he explains as he lowers the lid of his grilled cheese press. “Perfect. Then you get it crisp on the outside.” He opens the grill to reveal a golden square of delicious perfection, the gooey cheese happily sizzling within. “So this is the key technique,” he explains. At which point, he does something unexpected and strange.

Already, you may feel a glaze of ennui is beginning to cover your eyes. The warning signs of overly fancy prose are flashing wildly. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne made 160 runs for Queensland Bulls this week and is being widely discussed for an Australian Test recall before the Ashes.

You likely wish to read more about his performance. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to endure three paragraphs of playful digression about toasted sandwiches, plus an extra unwanted bonus paragraph of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the second person. You sigh again.

Marnus transfers the sandwich on to a plate and heads over the fridge. “It’s uncommon,” he announces, “but I genuinely enjoy the grilled sandwich chilled. Boom, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, head to practice, come back. Perfect. Toastie’s ready to go.”

Back to Cricket

Look, to cut to the chase. How about we cover the cricket bit initially? Little treat for making it this far. And while there may still be six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s century against the Tasmanian side – his third of the summer in all cricket – feels quietly decisive.

This is an Aussie opening batsmen clearly missing performance and method, revealed against the South African team in the Test championship decider, shown up once more in the West Indies after that. Labuschagne was omitted during that tour, but on one hand you sensed 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. The opener has one century in his past 44 innings. The young batsman looks less like a Test match opener and more like the handsome actor who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood epic. No other options has presented a strong argument. One contender looks finished. Another option is still oddly present, like dust or mold. Meanwhile their captain, the pace bowler, is hurt and suddenly this seems like a weirdly lightweight side, short of strength or equilibrium, the kind of effortless self-assurance that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a match begins.

Labuschagne’s Return

Step forward Marnus: a leading Test player as in the recent past, freshly dropped from the 50-over squad, the ideal candidate to return structure to a brittle empire. And we are told this is a composed and reflective Labuschagne now: a simplified, back-to-basics Labuschagne, no longer as maniacally obsessed with minor adjustments. “I feel like I’ve really cut out extras,” he said after his ton. “Not really too technical, just what I need to bat effectively.”

Clearly, this is doubted. In all likelihood this is a rebrand that exists just in Labuschagne’s personal view: still furiously stripping down that method from all day, going further toward simplicity than anyone else would try. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will spend months in the nets with coaches and video clips, exhaustively remoulding himself into the least technical batter that has ever been seen. This is simply the trait of the obsessed, and the characteristic that has long made Labuschagne one of the highly engaging sportsmen in the game.

The Broader Picture

Maybe before this very open Ashes series, there is even a kind of interesting contrast to Labuschagne’s endless focus. For England we have a team for whom technical study, especially personal critique, is a forbidden topic. Feel the flavours. Stay in the moment. Smell the now.

On the opposite side you have a player such as Labuschagne, a man completely dedicated with the game and totally indifferent by who knows about it, who observes cricket even in the gaps in the game, who approaches this quirky game with precisely the amount of absurd reverence it deserves.

His method paid off. During his shamanic phase – from the time he walked out to replace a concussed the senior batsman at the famous ground in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed 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, colleagues noticed him on the morning of a game positioned on a seat in a focused mindset, literally visualising every single ball of his innings. As per Cricviz, during the early stages of his career a statistically unfathomable proportion of catches were dropped off his bat. Somehow Labuschagne had predicted events before fielders could respond to influence it.

Recent Challenges

It’s possible this was why his form started to decline the moment he reached the summit. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he lost faith in his cover drive, got unable to move forward and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s connected really. Meanwhile his coach, Neil D’Costa, reckons a focus on white-ball cricket started to erode confidence in his positioning. Encouragingly: he’s now excluded from the 50-over squad.

Certainly it’s relevant, too, that Labuschagne is a strongly faithful person, an evangelical Christian who thinks that this is all predetermined, who thus sees his role as one of reaching this optimal zone, no matter how mysterious it may appear to the ordinary people.

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