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Marnus evenly coats butter on each surface of a slice of soft bread. “That’s the secret,” he tells the camera as he lowers the lid of his sandwich grill. “There you go. Then you get it crisp on both sides.” He opens the grill to reveal a perfectly browned of delicious perfection, the melted cheese happily bubbling away. “So this is the trick of the trade,” he explains. At which point, he does something horrific and unspeakable.

By now, I sense a layer of boredom is beginning to cover 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 widely discussed for an national team comeback before the Ashes series.

You probably want to read more about his performance. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to sit through several lines of playful digression about grilled cheese, plus an additional unnecessary part of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the direct address. You groan once more.

He turns the sandwich on to a serving plate and walks across the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he states, “but I actually like the cold toastie. Done, in the fridge. You allow the cheese to set, head to practice, come back. Alright. It’s ideal.”

On-Field Matters

Okay, here’s the main point. Let’s address the match details out of the way first? Little treat for your patience. And while there may be just six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s 100 runs against the Tigers – his third of the summer in all cricket – feels significantly impactful.

This is an Aussie opening batsmen badly short of consistency and technique, revealed against South Africa in the World Test Championship final, shown up once more in the West Indies after that. Labuschagne was dropped during that trip, but on a certain level you sensed Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the soonest moment. Now he seems to have given them the ideal reason.

This represents a approach the team should follow. Usman Khawaja has a single hundred in his past 44 innings. The young batsman looks less like a Test opener and rather like the good-looking star who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood epic. Other candidates has made a cogent case. One contender looks out of form. Another option is still inexplicably hanging around, like dust or mold. Meanwhile their leader, the pace bowler, is injured and suddenly this appears as a unusually thin squad, short of strength or equilibrium, the kind of effortless self-assurance that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a ball is bowled.

Marnus’s Comeback

Enter Marnus: a top-ranked Test batsman as just two years ago, just left out from the 50-over squad, the right person to bring stability to a shaky team. And we are told this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne now: a pared-down, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, no longer as maniacally obsessed with small details. “I feel like I’ve really stripped it back,” he said after his century. “Not really too technical, just what I should score runs.”

Of course, nobody truly believes this. In all likelihood this is a fresh image that exists only in Labuschagne’s personal view: still constantly refining that method from morning to night, going more back to basics than any player has attempted. Like basic approach? Marnus will spend months in the nets with advisors and replays, completely transforming into the most basic batsman that has ever been seen. This is just the quality of the focused, and the quality that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the highly engaging sportsmen in the game.

The Broader Picture

Perhaps before this very open Ashes series, there is even a kind of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s endless focus. On England’s side we have a squad for whom detailed examination, let alone self-analysis, is a risky subject. Trust your gut. Focus on the present. Live in the instant.

In the other corner you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a individual utterly absorbed with the game and magnificently unbothered by public perception, who sees cricket even in the gaps in the game, who approaches this quirky game with exactly the level of absurd reverence it demands.

And it worked. During his intense period – from the time he walked out to come in for a hurt Steve Smith at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne was able to see the game on another level. To reach it – through absolute focus – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his time with English county cricket, teammates would find him on the morning of a game positioned on a seat in a trance-like state, literally visualising every single ball of his time at the crease. Per cricket statisticians, during the first few years of his career a unusually large catches were dropped off his bat. Somehow Labuschagne had predicted events before others could react to influence it.

Recent Challenges

Maybe this was why his form started to decline the moment he reached the summit. There were no new heights to imagine, just a boundless, uncharted void before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he stopped trusting his cover drive, got unable to move forward and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his mentor, his coach, believes a focus on white-ball cricket started to undermine belief in his positioning. Encouragingly: he’s recently omitted from the 50-over squad.

Certainly it’s relevant, too, that Labuschagne is a devoutly religious individual, an religious believer who thinks that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his role as one of accessing this state of flow, however enigmatic and inexplicable it may look to the rest of us.

This, to my mind, has always been the key distinction between him and the other batsman, a more naturally gifted player