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Labuschagne carefully spreads butter on the top and bottom of a slice of white bread. “That’s the key,” he states as he lowers the lid of his grilled cheese press. “Perfect. Then you get it golden on each side.” He lifts the lid to reveal a golden square of pure toasted goodness, the gooey cheese happily melting inside. “Here’s the key technique,” he announces. At which point, he does something horrific and unspeakable.

By now, you may feel a sense of disinterest is beginning to form across your eyes. The red lights of overly fancy prose are going off. You’re probably aware that Labuschagne scored 160 for his state team this week and is being eagerly promoted for an return to the Test side before the Ashes.

You likely wish to read more about that. But first – you now grasp with irritation – you’re going to have to get through several lines of wobbling whimsy about toasted sandwiches, plus an additional unnecessary part of self-referential analysis in the direct address. You sigh again.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a plate and walks across the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he states, “but I personally prefer the cold toastie. There, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, go bat, come back. Boom. It’s ideal.”

The Cricket Context

Okay, here’s the main point. Shall we get the cricket bit initially? Little treat for your patience. And while there may only be six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s century against the Tasmanian side – his third in recent months in all cricket – feels significantly impactful.

This is an Australian top order seriously lacking consistency and technique, shown up by the South African team in the Test championship decider, shown up once more in the West Indies after that. Labuschagne was dropped during that trip, but on a certain level you gathered Australia were keen to restore him at the first opportunity. Now he seems to have given them the ideal reason.

And this is a strategy Australia must implement. The opener has just one 100 in his last 44 knocks. The young batsman looks less like a first-innings batsman and rather like the good-looking star who might portray a cricketer in a Bollywood epic. Other candidates has presented a strong argument. One contender looks cooked. Marcus Harris is still oddly present, like dust or mold. Meanwhile their skipper, Pat Cummins, is unfit and suddenly this appears as a surprisingly weak team, short of strength or equilibrium, the kind of effortless self-assurance that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a ball is bowled.

Labuschagne’s Return

Here comes Labuschagne: a leading Test player as in the recent past, freshly dropped from the one-day team, the right person to return structure to a fragile lineup. And we are advised this is a composed and reflective Labuschagne these days: a streamlined, no-frills Labuschagne, less intensely fixated with small details. “It seems I’ve really simplified things,” he said after his hundred. “Not really too technical, just what I need to make runs.”

Naturally, few accept this. Probably this is a fresh image that exists entirely in Labuschagne’s mind: still endlessly adjusting that approach from morning to night, going further toward simplicity than any player has attempted. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will spend months in the training with trainers and footage, thoroughly reshaping his game into the most basic batsman that has ever played. That’s the quality of the focused, and the quality that has long made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating cricketers in the cricket.

The Broader Picture

It could be before this inscrutably unpredictable England-Australia contest, there is even a kind of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. On England’s side we have a squad for whom detailed examination, especially personal critique, is a kind of dangerous taboo. Trust your gut. Be where the ball is. Live in the instant.

On the opposite side you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a player utterly absorbed with the sport and wonderfully unconcerned by public perception, who finds cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who handles this unusual pursuit with precisely the amount of quirky respect it deserves.

This approach succeeded. During his intense period – from the time he walked out to replace a concussed Steve Smith at Lord’s in 2019 to through 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed to see the game more deeply. To reach it – through absolute focus – on a elevated, strange, passionate tier. During his days playing club cricket, fellow players saw him on the morning of a game resting on a bench in a trance-like state, actually imagining each delivery of his batting stint. According to cricket statisticians, during the initial period of his career a unusually large catches were missed when he batted. Remarkably Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before others could react to change it.

Recent Challenges

Perhaps 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. Additionally – he lost faith in 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 trainer, D’Costa, thinks a focus on white-ball cricket started to undermine belief in his technique. Encouragingly: he’s recently omitted from the one-day team.

Surely it matters, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an religious believer who thinks that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his task as one of reaching this optimal zone, no matter how mysterious it may appear to the mortal of us.

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