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The Australian batsman carefully spreads butter on each surface of a slice of white bread. “That’s the key,” he tells the camera as he lowers the lid of his sandwich grill. “Perfect. Then you get it toasted on the outside.” He opens the grill to reveal a golden square of delicious perfection, the melted cheese happily bubbling away. “Here’s the secret method,” he announces. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

Already, it’s clear a sense of disinterest is beginning to form across your eyes. The warning signs of elaborate writing are blinking intensely. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne scored 160 for Queensland this week and is being feverishly talked up 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 grasp with irritation – you’re going to have to sit through three paragraphs of wobbling whimsy about toasties, plus an extra unwanted bonus paragraph of overly analytical commentary in the direct address. You groan once more.

Marnus transfers the sandwich on to a plate and heads over the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he announces, “but I personally prefer the grilled sandwich chilled. Boom, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, go for a hit, come back. Perfect. It’s ideal.”

The Cricket Context

Okay, to cut to the chase. Let’s address the sports aspect out of the way first? Little treat for reading until now. And while there may be just six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s hundred against Tasmania – his third in recent months in all formats – feels importantly timed.

Here’s an Australia top three clearly missing performance and method, revealed against the South African team in the Test championship decider, exposed again in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was left out during that series, but on a certain level you gathered Australia were eager to bring him back at the first opportunity. Now he looks to have given them the perfect excuse.

This represents a strategy Australia must implement. Usman Khawaja has just one 100 in his last 44 knocks. The young batsman looks not quite a Test opener and more like the good-looking star who might act as a batsman in a Indian film. None of the alternatives has made a cogent case. Nathan McSweeney looks cooked. Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like dust or mold. Meanwhile their leader, Cummins, is injured and suddenly this feels like a unusually thin squad, lacking strength or equilibrium, the kind of natural confidence that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a game starts.

Marnus’s Comeback

Enter Marnus: a world No 1 Test batter as in the recent past, freshly dropped from the ODI side, the ideal candidate to return structure to a fragile lineup. And we are informed this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne now: a pared-down, back-to-basics Labuschagne, no longer as extremely focused with technical minutiae. “I believe I have really cut out extras,” he said after his century. “Not really too technical, just what I need to make runs.”

Naturally, nobody truly believes this. In all likelihood this is a rebrand that exists just in Labuschagne’s mind: still constantly refining that method from all day, going further toward simplicity than anyone else would try. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will spend months in the nets with trainers and footage, completely transforming into the least technical batter that has ever played. This is simply the trait of the obsessed, and the quality that has long made Labuschagne one of the most wildly absorbing sportsmen in the game.

The Broader Picture

Perhaps before this inscrutably unpredictable England-Australia contest, there is even a kind of interesting contrast to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. In England we have a team for whom detailed examination, let alone self-analysis, is a kind of dangerous taboo. Feel the flavours. Be where the ball is. Live in the instant.

On the opposite side you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a individual completely dedicated with cricket and wonderfully unconcerned by public perception, who finds cricket even in the moments outside play, who handles this unusual pursuit with just the right measure of absurd reverence it demands.

And it worked. During his intense period – from the instant he appeared to substitute for an injured Steve Smith at the famous ground in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed to see the game more deeply. To tap into it – through pure determination – on a elevated, strange, passionate tier. During his stint in club cricket, colleagues noticed him on the day of a match positioned on a seat in a trance-like state, actually imagining all balls of his innings. As per Cricviz, during the initial period of his career a surprisingly high number of chances were missed when he batted. Somehow Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before others could react to influence it.

Form Issues

Maybe this was why his career began to disintegrate the time he achieved top ranking. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a boundless, uncharted void before his eyes. Furthermore – he stopped trusting his favorite stroke, got unable to move forward and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s connected really. Meanwhile his trainer, his coach, reckons a focus on white-ball cricket started to erode confidence in his positioning. Encouragingly: he’s now excluded from the ODI side.

Surely it matters, 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 reaching this optimal zone, no matter how mysterious it may look to the rest of us.

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