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Marnus carefully spreads butter on both sides of a slice of white bread. “That’s the secret,” he states as he lowers the lid of his toastie maker. “Perfect. Then you get it golden on both sides.” He opens the grill to reveal a golden square of delicious perfection, the gooey cheese happily bubbling away. “And that’s the secret method,” he announces. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

Already, you may feel a sense of disinterest is beginning to appear in your eyes. The warning signs of sportswriting pretension are blinking intensely. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne scored 160 for Queensland Bulls this week and is being feverishly talked up for an Australian Test recall before the Ashes.

No doubt you’d prefer 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 wobbling whimsy about toasted sandwiches, plus an additional unnecessary part of self-referential analysis in the second person. You feel resigned.

He turns the sandwich on to a dish and moves toward the fridge. “It’s uncommon,” he announces, “but I personally prefer the cold toastie. There, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, head to practice, come back. Alright. Sandwich is perfect.”

Back to Cricket

Look, to cut to the chase. Shall we get the sports aspect to begin with? Small reward for making it this far. And while there may be just six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s hundred against Tasmania – his third in recent months in all formats – feels significantly impactful.

We have an Aussie opening batsmen badly short of form and structure, shown up by the South African team in the World Test Championship final, exposed again in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was dropped during that trip, but on a certain level you felt Australia were keen to restore him at the first opportunity. Now he appears to have given them the perfect excuse.

This represents a plan that Australia need to work. The opener has just one 100 in his last 44 knocks. Sam Konstas looks hardly a first-innings batsman and more like the handsome actor who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood movie. Other candidates has shown convincing form. McSweeney looks finished. Another option is still inexplicably hanging around, like dust or mold. Meanwhile their captain, Cummins, is hurt and suddenly this seems like a unusually thin squad, lacking command or stability, the kind of natural confidence that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a game starts.

Labuschagne’s Return

Here comes Labuschagne: a leading Test player as just two years ago, just left out from the one-day team, the right person to return structure to a brittle empire. And we are told this is a composed and reflective Labuschagne currently: a pared-down, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, not as maniacally obsessed with technical minutiae. “It seems I’ve really stripped it back,” he said after his ton. “Less focused on technique, just what I must bat effectively.”

Naturally, this is doubted. Most likely this is a fresh image that exists just in Labuschagne’s personal view: still constantly refining that method from morning to night, going further toward simplicity than any player has attempted. You want less technical? Marnus will spend months in the training with advisors and replays, completely transforming into the least technical batter that has ever played. This is simply the nature of the addict, and the trait that has long made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating sportsmen in the sport.

The Broader Picture

Perhaps before this highly uncertain England-Australia contest, there is even a kind of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. In England we have a side for whom detailed examination, let alone self-analysis, is a forbidden topic. Trust your gut. Focus on the present. Smell the now.

For Australia you have a individual like Labuschagne, a man completely dedicated with cricket and magnificently unbothered by others’ opinions, who observes cricket even in the gaps in the game, who approaches this quirky game with exactly the level of quirky respect it deserves.

And it worked. During his shamanic phase – from the time he walked out to replace a concussed Steve Smith at Lord’s in 2019 to through 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game with greater insight. To access it – through pure determination – on a elevated, strange, passionate tier. During his days playing English county cricket, colleagues noticed him on the game day resting on a bench in a focused mindset, mentally rehearsing every single ball of his time at the crease. According to Cricviz, during the first few years of his career a statistically unfathomable number of chances were spilled from his batting. In some way Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before others could react to influence it.

Form Issues

It’s possible this was why his career began to disintegrate the point he became number one. There were no further goals to picture, just a empty space before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he stopped trusting his cover drive, got trapped on the 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 attention to shorter formats started to undermine belief in his alignment. Good news: he’s now excluded from the 50-over squad.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a devoutly religious individual, an evangelical Christian who believes that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his role as one of achieving this peak performance, no matter how mysterious it may appear to the mortal of us.

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