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The Australian batsman evenly coats butter on both sides of a slice of soft bread. “That’s essential,” he explains as he closes the lid of his sandwich grill. “Perfect. Then you get it toasted on both sides.” He lifts the lid to reveal a perfectly browned of pure toasted goodness, the bubbling cheese happily melting inside. “So this is the key technique,” he announces. At which point, he does something horrific and unspeakable.

By now, it’s clear a sense of disinterest is beginning to cover your eyes. The red lights of overly fancy prose are flashing wildly. You’re probably aware that Labuschagne hit 160 for Queensland this week and is being feverishly talked up for an Australian Test recall before the England-Australia contest.

You probably want to read more about that. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to endure three paragraphs of wobbling whimsy about toasted sandwiches, plus an additional unnecessary part of overly analytical commentary in the direct address. You groan once more.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a plate and walks across the fridge. “Few try this,” he announces, “but I personally prefer the toastie cold. Boom, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, go for a hit, come back. Alright. Toastie’s ready to go.”

Back to Cricket

Okay, here’s the main point. Let’s address the cricket bit out of the way first? Small reward for reading until now. And while there may only be six weeks until the initial match, Labuschagne’s century against Tasmania – his third in recent months in all formats – feels quietly decisive.

Here’s an Australia top three badly short of form and structure, shown up by the Proteas in the WTC final, shown up once more in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was dropped during that series, but on some level you sensed Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the earliest chance. Now he appears to have given them the ideal reason.

This represents a approach the team should follow. Khawaja has a single hundred in his past 44 innings. Sam Konstas looks hardly a first-innings batsman and closer to the attractive performer who might play a Test opener in a Bollywood epic. Other candidates has made a cogent case. Nathan McSweeney looks finished. Marcus Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like dust or mold. Meanwhile their skipper, Pat Cummins, is unfit and suddenly this appears as a unusually thin squad, short of strength or equilibrium, the kind of natural confidence that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a game starts.

The Batsman’s Revival

Step forward Marnus: a world No 1 Test batter as just two years ago, freshly dropped from the 50-over squad, the ideal candidate to return structure to a shaky team. And we are advised this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne currently: a pared-down, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, less intensely fixated with technical minutiae. “I feel like I’ve really simplified things,” he said after his century. “Less focused on technique, just what I need to make runs.”

Clearly, nobody truly believes this. Probably this is a rebrand that exists only in Labuschagne’s personal view: still endlessly adjusting that method from all day, going deeper into fundamentals than any player has attempted. Like basic approach? Marnus will take time in the practice sessions with coaches and video clips, thoroughly reshaping his game into the least technical batter that has ever existed. This is simply the quality of the focused, and the characteristic that has long made Labuschagne one of the most wildly absorbing players in the cricket.

Bigger Scene

It could be before this very open England-Australia contest, there is even a kind of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s endless focus. In England we have a squad for whom detailed examination, let alone self-analysis, is a kind of dangerous taboo. Feel the flavours. Stay in the moment. Embrace the current.

On the opposite side you have a player such as Labuschagne, a individual terminally obsessed with the sport and wonderfully unconcerned by others’ opinions, who finds cricket even in the moments outside play, who approaches this quirky game with exactly the level of odd devotion it requires.

And it worked. During his focused era – from the instant he appeared to come in for a hurt Steve Smith at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to until late 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game more deeply. To reach it – through sheer intensity of will – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his stint in English county cricket, teammates would find him on the game day resting on a bench in a meditative condition, actually imagining all balls of his innings. As per Cricviz, during the first few years of his career a surprisingly high proportion of catches were missed when he batted. Remarkably Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before anyone had a chance to influence it.

Form Issues

Perhaps this was why his form started to decline the point he became number one. There were no new heights to imagine, just a empty space 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 connected really. Meanwhile his trainer, his coach, thinks a focus on white-ball cricket started to erode confidence in his alignment. Positive development: 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 holds that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his job as one of accessing this state of flow, despite being puzzling it may seem to the ordinary people.

This approach, to my mind, has always been the key distinction between him and Smith, a instinctive player