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Labuschagne methodically applies butter on each surface of a slice of plain bread. “That’s essential,” he explains as he lowers the lid of his grilled cheese press. “Perfect. Then you get it toasted on the outside.” He opens the grill to reveal a golden square of ideal crispiness, the gooey cheese happily melting inside. “So this is the key technique,” he declares. At which point, he does something unexpected and strange.

By now, I sense a sense of disinterest is beginning to form across your eyes. The red lights of overly fancy prose are flashing wildly. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne scored 160 for Queensland Bulls this week and is being widely discussed for an return to the Test side before the Ashes.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about his performance. But first – you now understand with frustration – you’re going to have to sit through a section of wobbling whimsy about toasties, plus an extra unwanted bonus paragraph of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the direct address. You groan once more.

He turns the sandwich on to a dish and moves toward the fridge. “Few try this,” he states, “but I genuinely enjoy the cold toastie. There, in the fridge. You allow the cheese to set, go for a hit, come back. Boom. Sandwich is perfect.”

The Cricket Context

Okay, to cut to the chase. Shall we get the cricket bit to begin with? Little treat for your patience. And while there may be just six weeks until the initial match, Labuschagne’s century against the Tasmanian side – his third this season in various games – feels quietly decisive.

This is an Australian top order seriously lacking form and structure, shown up by South Africa in the Test championship decider, highlighted further in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was left out during that trip, but on one hand you gathered Australia were keen to restore him at the earliest chance. Now he looks to have given them the ideal reason.

And this is a approach the team should follow. The opener has a single hundred in his last 44 knocks. Konstas looks less like a Test match opener and more like the good-looking star who might play a Test opener in a Indian film. No other options has presented a strong argument. McSweeney looks finished. Marcus Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like dust or mold. Meanwhile their captain, Cummins, is unfit and suddenly this feels like a surprisingly weak team, lacking command or stability, the kind of built-in belief that has often given Australia a lead before a ball is bowled.

Marnus’s Comeback

Enter Marnus: a top-ranked Test batsman as recently as 2023, freshly dropped from the 50-over squad, the right person to restore order to a fragile lineup. And we are told this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne these days: a simplified, back-to-basics Labuschagne, less extremely focused with minor adjustments. “It seems I’ve really simplified things,” he said after his ton. “Not really too technical, just what I need to score runs.”

Of course, this is doubted. In all likelihood this is a new approach that exists entirely in Labuschagne’s personal view: still constantly refining that method from dawn to dusk, going deeper into fundamentals than anyone else would try. Like basic approach? Marnus will spend months in the training with coaches and video clips, exhaustively remoulding himself into the simplest player that has ever existed. This is simply the nature of the addict, and the characteristic that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the highly engaging sportsmen in the sport.

The Broader Picture

Perhaps before this highly uncertain Ashes series, there is even a kind of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. On England’s side we have a team for whom any kind of analysis, not to mention self-review, is a kind of dangerous taboo. Trust your gut. Focus on the present. Smell the now.

In the other corner you have a player such as Labuschagne, a player utterly absorbed with cricket and magnificently unbothered by others’ opinions, who finds cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who approaches this quirky game with just the right measure of absurd reverence it demands.

His method paid off. During his focused era – from the instant he appeared to replace a concussed the senior batsman at the famous ground in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne was able to see the game more deeply. To access it – through sheer intensity of will – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his stint in English county cricket, fellow players saw him on the game day resting on a bench in a trance-like state, mentally rehearsing each delivery of his innings. Per cricket statisticians, during the initial period of his career a statistically unfathomable number of chances were dropped off his bat. Remarkably Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before anyone had a chance to influence it.

Recent Challenges

Maybe this was why his career began to disintegrate the moment he reached the summit. There were no further goals to picture, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Furthermore – he lost faith in his cover drive, got trapped on the crease and seemed to misjudge his positioning. But it’s part of the same issue. Meanwhile his mentor, Neil D’Costa, believes a focus on white-ball cricket started to undermine belief in his technique. Positive development: he’s recently omitted from the 50-over squad.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an evangelical Christian who believes that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his task as one of achieving this peak performance, despite being puzzling it may look to the mortal of us.

This approach, to my mind, has always been the primary contrast between him and Smith, a inherently talented player