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Marnus carefully spreads butter on the top and bottom of a slice of plain bread. “That’s the key,” he tells the camera as he closes the lid of his grilled cheese press. “There you go. Then you get it golden on both sides.” He lifts the lid to reveal a toasted delight of pure toasted goodness, the bubbling cheese happily sizzling within. “Here’s the key technique,” he announces. At which point, he does something horrific and unspeakable.

At this stage, it’s clear a layer of boredom is beginning to cover your eyes. The alarm bells of elaborate writing are flashing wildly. You’re likely conscious that Labuschagne scored 160 for his state team this week and is being feverishly talked up for an national team comeback before the Ashes.

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 get through three paragraphs of wobbling whimsy about grilled cheese, plus an further tangential section of overly analytical commentary in the direct address. You groan once more.

Marnus transfers the sandwich on to a dish and heads over the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he remarks, “but I genuinely enjoy the toastie cold. There, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, go bat, come back. Perfect. It’s ideal.”

On-Field Matters

Alright, here’s the main point. Shall we get the match details to begin with? Quick update for your patience. And while there may be just six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s hundred against Tasmania – his third of the summer in all formats – feels importantly timed.

Here’s an Australian top order seriously lacking consistency and technique, revealed against the Proteas in the Test championship decider, exposed again in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was omitted during that tour, but on a certain level you felt Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the soonest moment. Now he appears to have given them the right opportunity.

This represents a plan that Australia need to work. Usman Khawaja has just one 100 in his past 44 innings. The young batsman looks less like a Test opener and rather like the handsome actor who might play a Test opener in a Bollywood movie. None of the alternatives has made a cogent case. One contender looks cooked. Harris is still oddly present, like unwanted guests. Meanwhile their captain, the pace bowler, is injured and suddenly this seems like a unusually thin squad, missing authority or balance, the kind of built-in belief that has often given Australia a lead before a game starts.

Marnus’s Comeback

Here comes Labuschagne: a leading Test player as in the recent past, freshly dropped from the one-day team, the ideal candidate to return structure to a fragile lineup. And we are informed this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne now: a streamlined, no-frills Labuschagne, not as extremely focused with technical minutiae. “I feel like I’ve really simplified things,” he said after his hundred. “Not really too technical, just what I should score runs.”

Clearly, few accept this. Most likely this is a fresh image that exists entirely in Labuschagne’s own head: still constantly refining that technique from dawn to dusk, going deeper into fundamentals than anyone has ever dared. You want less technical? Marnus will spend months in the nets with coaches and video clips, thoroughly reshaping his game into the least technical batter that has ever existed. This is simply the trait of the obsessed, and the quality that has long made Labuschagne one of the most wildly absorbing sportsmen in the cricket.

Bigger Scene

Maybe before this inscrutably unpredictable England-Australia contest, there is even a type of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s constant dedication. On England’s side we have a squad for whom technical study, not to mention self-review, is a kind of dangerous taboo. Feel the flavours. Be where the ball is. Smell the now.

For Australia you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a man utterly absorbed with cricket and totally indifferent by who knows about it, who observes cricket even in the moments outside play, who approaches this quirky game with precisely the amount of odd devotion it deserves.

His method paid off. During his intense period – from the instant he appeared to substitute for an injured Smith at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to until late 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game more deeply. To access it – through sheer intensity of will – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his days playing club cricket, teammates would find him on the day of a match resting on a bench in a focused mindset, literally visualising all balls of his batting stint. Per cricket statisticians, during the first few years of his career a surprisingly high catches were spilled from his batting. Remarkably Labuschagne had anticipated outcomes before anyone had a chance to change it.

Form Issues

It’s possible this was why his career began to disintegrate the moment he reached the summit. There were no further goals to picture, just a empty space before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he began doubting his favorite stroke, got trapped on the crease and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s part of the same issue. Meanwhile his coach, Neil D’Costa, thinks a focus on white-ball cricket started to erode confidence in his technique. Good news: he’s just been dropped from the ODI side.

Surely it matters, too, that Labuschagne is a devoutly religious individual, an evangelical Christian who thinks that this is all predetermined, who thus sees his role as one of accessing this state of flow, no matter how mysterious it may appear to the mortal of us.

This, to my mind, has always been the main point of difference between him and the other batsman, a more naturally gifted player