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The Australian batsman evenly coats butter on each surface of a slice of white bread. “That’s the secret,” he explains as he closes the lid of his sandwich grill. “There you go. Then you get it golden on each side.” He checks inside to reveal a golden square of delicious perfection, the bubbling cheese happily melting inside. “And that’s the key technique,” he declares. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

At this stage, you may feel a sense of disinterest is beginning to form across your eyes. The red lights of sportswriting pretension are going off. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne scored 160 for his state team this week and is being widely discussed for an Australian Test recall before the Ashes.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about cricket matters. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to endure several lines of light-hearted musing about toasted sandwiches, plus an extra unwanted bonus paragraph of overly analytical commentary in the second person. You feel resigned.

He turns the sandwich on to a plate and walks across the fridge. “It’s uncommon,” he remarks, “but I personally prefer the grilled sandwich chilled. Boom, in the fridge. You allow the cheese to set, head to practice, come back. Boom. Toastie’s ready to go.”

Back to Cricket

Okay, let’s try it like this. Let’s address the cricket bit initially? Small reward for reading until now. And while there may still be six weeks until the initial match, Labuschagne’s century against Tasmania – his third this season in all formats – feels importantly timed.

This is an Australian top order clearly missing consistency and technique, revealed against the South African team in the WTC final, highlighted further in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was dropped during that tour, but on one hand you gathered Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the first opportunity. Now he looks to have given them the perfect excuse.

This represents a approach the team should follow. The opener has a single hundred in his last 44 knocks. Konstas looks not quite a Test opener and closer to the good-looking star who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood movie. Other candidates has presented a strong argument. Nathan McSweeney looks finished. Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their captain, the pace bowler, is injured and suddenly this feels like a unusually thin squad, lacking command or stability, the kind of built-in belief that has often helped Australia dominate before a game starts.

Labuschagne’s Return

Here comes Labuschagne: a top-ranked Test batsman as just two years ago, freshly dropped from the 50-over squad, the perfect character to bring stability to a shaky team. And we are told this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne now: a pared-down, back-to-basics Labuschagne, no longer as maniacally obsessed with minor adjustments. “I feel like I’ve really simplified things,” he said after his ton. “Less focused on technique, just what I must bat effectively.”

Of course, this is doubted. In all likelihood this is a rebrand that exists entirely in Labuschagne’s personal view: still constantly refining that approach from morning to night, going deeper into fundamentals than anyone has ever dared. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will spend months in the nets with coaches and video clips, thoroughly reshaping his game into the least technical batter that has ever played. This is just the trait of the obsessed, and the characteristic that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating cricketers in the sport.

Wider Context

Perhaps before this very open Ashes series, there is even a sort of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. In England we have a squad for whom any kind of analysis, let alone self-analysis, is a kind of dangerous taboo. Go with instinct. Be where the ball is. Smell the now.

In the other corner you have a player such as Labuschagne, a player utterly absorbed with the game and totally indifferent by who knows about it, who finds cricket even in the gaps in the game, who approaches this quirky game with just the right measure of odd devotion it demands.

And it worked. During his shamanic phase – from the time he walked out to replace a concussed Steve Smith at the famous ground in 2019 to through 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed to see the game on another level. To access it – through pure determination – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his stint in club cricket, fellow players saw him on the game day resting on a bench in a focused mindset, actually imagining each delivery of his time at the crease. As per cricket statisticians, during the initial period of his career a surprisingly high number of chances were dropped off his bat. In some way Labuschagne had predicted events before others could react to change it.

Form Issues

It’s possible this was why his form started to decline the point he became number one. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he began doubting his signature shot, got unable to move forward and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s part of the same issue. Meanwhile his coach, Neil D’Costa, reckons a attention to shorter formats started to weaken assurance in his technique. Good news: he’s now excluded from the 50-over squad.

Surely it matters, too, that Labuschagne is a strongly faithful person, an committed Christian who believes that this is all preordained, who thus sees his task as one of accessing this state of flow, however enigmatic and inexplicable it may appear to the mortal of us.

This, to my mind, has long been the primary contrast between him and the other batsman, a instinctive player