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The Australian batsman evenly coats butter on both sides of a slice of plain bread. “That’s the key,” he states as he closes the lid of his grilled cheese press. “Perfect. Then you get it golden on each side.” He checks inside to reveal a golden square of delicious perfection, the gooey cheese happily melting inside. “So this is the secret method,” he announces. At which point, he does something horrific and unspeakable.

By now, it’s clear a glaze of ennui is beginning to form across your eyes. The red lights of sportswriting pretension are blinking intensely. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne made 160 runs for his state team this week and is being widely discussed for an Australian Test recall before the Ashes series.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about that. 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 self-referential analysis in the “you” perspective. You sigh again.

Marnus transfers the sandwich on to a dish and heads over the fridge. “It’s uncommon,” he remarks, “but I personally prefer the grilled sandwich chilled. Done, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, head to practice, come back. Boom. Sandwich is perfect.”

Back to Cricket

Alright, here’s the main point. Let’s address the cricket bit out of the way first? Little treat for your patience. And while there may still be six weeks until the initial match, Labuschagne’s hundred against the Tigers – his third in recent months in all formats – feels quietly decisive.

We have an Aussie opening batsmen badly short of form and structure, revealed against the South African team in the WTC final, highlighted further in the West Indies after that. Labuschagne was omitted during that trip, but on a certain level you felt Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the first opportunity. Now he appears to have given them the ideal reason.

Here is a strategy Australia must implement. Khawaja has just one 100 in his past 44 innings. Sam Konstas looks not quite a first-innings batsman and rather like the attractive performer who might play a Test opener in a Bollywood movie. None of the alternatives has made a cogent case. Nathan McSweeney looks cooked. Harris is still surprisingly included, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their leader, Cummins, is injured and suddenly this feels like a unusually thin squad, missing strength or equilibrium, the kind of natural confidence that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a game starts.

Marnus’s Comeback

Here comes Labuschagne: a top-ranked Test batsman as in the recent past, freshly dropped from the ODI side, the right person to bring stability to a shaky team. And we are advised this is a composed and reflective Labuschagne these days: a pared-down, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, less extremely focused with small details. “It seems I’ve really cut out extras,” he said after his ton. “Not really too technical, just what I should score runs.”

Naturally, nobody truly believes this. In all likelihood this is a new approach that exists entirely in Labuschagne’s personal view: still endlessly adjusting that technique from all day, going more back to basics than any player has attempted. You want less technical? Marnus will take time in the nets with trainers and footage, thoroughly reshaping his game into the least technical batter that has ever played. This is just the quality of the focused, and the characteristic that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the most wildly absorbing cricketers in the sport.

Wider Context

Perhaps before this highly uncertain historic rivalry, there is even a sort of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s endless focus. For England we have a squad for whom any kind of analysis, let alone self-analysis, is a forbidden topic. Feel the flavours. Stay in the moment. Live in the instant.

In the other corner you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a player utterly absorbed with the game and wonderfully unconcerned by others’ opinions, who finds cricket even in the moments outside play, who approaches this quirky game with just the right measure of absurd reverence it requires.

This approach succeeded. During his focused era – from the time he walked out to come in for a hurt Steve Smith at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to until late 2022 – Labuschagne was able to see the game with greater insight. To reach it – through absolute focus – on a elevated, strange, passionate tier. During his time with club cricket, teammates would find him on the day of a match resting on a bench in a meditative condition, actually imagining each delivery of his time at the crease. As per Cricviz, during the first few years of his career a surprisingly high number of chances were dropped off his bat. In some way Labuschagne had anticipated outcomes before anyone had a chance to change it.

Form Issues

Maybe this was why his form started to decline the moment he reached the summit. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he lost faith in his favorite stroke, got stuck in his crease and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s part of the same issue. Meanwhile his mentor, his coach, thinks a attention to shorter formats started to weaken assurance in his technique. Positive development: he’s now excluded from the ODI side.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a devoutly religious individual, an evangelical Christian who believes that this is all preordained, who thus sees his job as one of reaching this optimal zone, no matter how mysterious it may look to the mortal of us.

This mindset, to my mind, has long been the key distinction between him and Steve Smith, a inherently talented player