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Labuschagne methodically applies butter on the top and bottom of a slice of soft bread. “That’s the secret,” he states as he closes the lid of his toastie maker. “Perfect. Then you get it golden on each side.” He checks inside to reveal a golden square of delicious perfection, the melted cheese happily sizzling within. “And that’s the key technique,” he announces. At which point, he does something unexpected and strange.

By now, I sense a layer of boredom is beginning to cover your eyes. The alarm bells of sportswriting pretension are blinking intensely. You’re probably aware that Labuschagne made 160 runs for Queensland Bulls this week and is being widely discussed for an Australian Test recall before the England-Australia contest.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about cricket matters. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to get through three paragraphs of light-hearted musing about grilled cheese, plus an further tangential section of self-referential analysis in the “you” perspective. You groan once more.

He turns the sandwich on to a plate and moves toward the fridge. “It’s uncommon,” 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.”

On-Field Matters

Okay, here’s the main point. Let’s address the cricket bit out of the way first? Small reward for making it this far. And while there may be just six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s century against the Tigers – his third this season in all cricket – feels importantly timed.

We have an Australia top three seriously lacking consistency and technique, shown up by the South African team in the Test championship decider, shown up once more in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was left out during that series, but on a certain level you felt Australia were keen to restore him at the first opportunity. Now he appears to have given them the perfect excuse.

This represents a plan that Australia need to work. The opener has one century in his recent 44 batting efforts. Sam Konstas looks hardly a first-innings batsman and closer to the handsome actor who might play a Test opener in a Bollywood epic. Other candidates has made a cogent case. Nathan McSweeney looks cooked. Another option is still inexplicably hanging around, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their skipper, Pat Cummins, is unfit and suddenly this appears as a weirdly lightweight side, short of strength or equilibrium, the kind of built-in belief that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a ball is bowled.

Labuschagne’s Return

Enter Marnus: a leading Test player as recently as 2023, recently omitted from the 50-over squad, the perfect character to restore order to a brittle empire. And we are told this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne currently: a streamlined, back-to-basics Labuschagne, not as intensely fixated with minor adjustments. “It seems I’ve really cut out extras,” he said after his century. “Not really too technical, just what I should make runs.”

Of course, few accept this. Most likely this is a fresh image that exists entirely in Labuschagne’s own head: still endlessly adjusting that approach from morning to night, going deeper into fundamentals than anyone has ever dared. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will spend months in the training with trainers and footage, exhaustively remoulding himself into the simplest player that has ever been seen. That’s the nature of the addict, and the characteristic that has always made Labuschagne one of the highly engaging sportsmen in the cricket.

The Broader Picture

Maybe before this very open historic rivalry, there is even a kind of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s endless focus. In England we have a side for whom technical study, let alone self-analysis, is a risky subject. Feel the flavours. Be where the ball is. Embrace the current.

In the other corner you have a individual like Labuschagne, a man completely dedicated 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 exactly the level of odd devotion it demands.

This approach succeeded. During his shamanic phase – from the time he walked out to come in for a hurt the senior batsman at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game with greater insight. To access it – through pure determination – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. 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, literally visualising all balls of his innings. According to Cricviz, during the first few years of his career a unusually large catches were missed when he batted. Somehow Labuschagne had predicted events before anyone had a chance to influence it.

Current Struggles

Perhaps this was why his career began to disintegrate the time he achieved top ranking. There were no further goals to picture, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he began doubting his favorite stroke, got stuck in his crease and seemed to misjudge his positioning. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his mentor, Neil D’Costa, believes a attention to shorter formats started to erode confidence in his technique. Good news: he’s recently omitted from the 50-over squad.

Surely it matters, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an evangelical Christian who holds that this is all preordained, who thus sees his task as one of achieving this peak performance, however enigmatic and inexplicable it may appear to the ordinary people.

This, to my mind, has long been the main point of difference between him and Smith, a instinctive player