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The Australian batsman methodically applies butter on the top and bottom of a slice of plain bread. “That’s essential,” he states as he lowers the lid of his toastie maker. “Boom. Then you get it crisp on both sides.” He opens the grill to reveal a perfectly browned of ideal crispiness, the bubbling cheese happily melting inside. “Here’s the key technique,” he announces. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

At this stage, it’s clear a layer of boredom is beginning to appear in your eyes. The alarm bells of overly fancy prose are flashing wildly. You’re likely conscious 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.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about that. But first – you now understand with frustration – you’re going to have to get through several lines of wobbling whimsy about toasties, plus an further tangential section of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the direct address. You groan once more.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a serving plate and moves toward the fridge. “It’s uncommon,” he states, “but I actually like the toastie cold. Boom, in the fridge. You allow the cheese to set, head to practice, come back. Boom. Toastie’s ready to go.”

Back to Cricket

Look, here’s the main point. How about we cover the cricket bit to begin with? Quick update for reading until now. And while there may only be six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s hundred against the Tasmanian side – his third of the summer in various games – feels significantly impactful.

We have an Aussie opening batsmen badly short of performance and method, exposed by the South African team in the Test championship decider, exposed again in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was left out during that trip, but on some level you felt Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the first opportunity. Now he looks to have given them the perfect excuse.

And this is a approach the team should follow. Usman Khawaja has just one 100 in his last 44 knocks. Konstas looks hardly a Test match opener and more like the good-looking star who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood movie. No other options has presented a strong argument. One contender looks cooked. Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their leader, the pace bowler, is injured and suddenly this feels like a unusually thin squad, lacking authority or balance, the kind of effortless self-assurance that has often given Australia a lead before a match begins.

Labuschagne’s Return

Step forward Marnus: a leading Test player as recently as 2023, recently omitted from the one-day team, the right person to bring stability to a fragile lineup. And we are informed this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne currently: a pared-down, no-frills Labuschagne, not as maniacally obsessed with technical minutiae. “I feel like I’ve really stripped it back,” he said after his ton. “Less focused on technique, just what I need to score runs.”

Naturally, nobody truly believes this. In all likelihood this is a new approach that exists just in Labuschagne’s mind: still constantly refining that method from morning to night, going deeper into fundamentals than anyone else would try. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will take time in the practice sessions with trainers and footage, exhaustively remoulding himself into the least technical batter that has ever played. That’s the quality of the focused, and the characteristic that has always made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating players in the sport.

Bigger Scene

Perhaps before this highly uncertain Ashes series, there is even a kind of interesting contrast to Labuschagne’s endless focus. On England’s side we have a squad for whom technical study, let alone self-analysis, is a risky subject. Feel the flavours. Be where the ball is. Live in the instant.

In the other corner you have a player such as Labuschagne, a individual utterly absorbed with cricket and magnificently unbothered by public perception, who observes cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who approaches this quirky game with just the right measure of absurd reverence it requires.

This approach succeeded. During his shamanic phase – from the moment he strode out to replace a concussed Steve Smith at Lord’s in 2019 to through 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed to see the game on another level. To reach it – through pure determination – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his time with Kent league cricket, fellow players saw him on the game day positioned on a seat in a trance-like state, literally visualising each delivery of his time at the crease. Per Cricviz, during the early stages of his career a statistically unfathomable number of chances were missed when he batted. In some way Labuschagne had anticipated outcomes before fielders could respond to change it.

Recent Challenges

Maybe this was why his form started to decline the moment he reached the summit. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a empty space before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he stopped trusting his signature shot, got stuck in his crease and seemed to misjudge his positioning. But it’s part of the same issue. Meanwhile his coach, D’Costa, thinks a attention to shorter formats started to undermine belief in his alignment. Encouragingly: he’s now excluded from the ODI side.

Certainly it’s relevant, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an committed Christian who holds that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his role as one of accessing this state of flow, no matter how mysterious it may seem to the rest of us.

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