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Marnus methodically applies butter on each surface of a slice of soft bread. “That’s essential,” he tells the camera as he brings down the lid of his grilled cheese press. “Boom. Then you get it golden on each side.” He lifts the lid to reveal a perfectly browned of pure toasted goodness, the gooey cheese happily bubbling away. “And that’s the trick of the trade,” he announces. At which point, he does something unexpected and strange.

At this stage, you may feel 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 scored 160 for Queensland Bulls this week and is being eagerly promoted for an return to the Test side 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 get through a section of light-hearted musing about grilled cheese, plus an extra unwanted bonus paragraph of self-referential analysis in the second person. You feel resigned.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a serving plate and moves toward the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he remarks, “but I personally prefer the toastie cold. Done, in the fridge. You allow the cheese to set, go for a hit, come back. Boom. Sandwich is perfect.”

On-Field Matters

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 be just six weeks until the initial match, Labuschagne’s 100 runs against the Tigers – his third in recent months in all cricket – feels significantly impactful.

Here’s an Australia top three badly short of consistency and technique, revealed against the South African team in the Test championship decider, highlighted further in the West Indies after that. Labuschagne was dropped during that series, but on a certain level you sensed Australia were keen to restore him at the soonest moment. Now he looks to have given them the ideal reason.

And this is a approach the team should follow. Usman Khawaja has one century in his past 44 innings. Konstas looks less like a Test opener and closer to the good-looking star who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood epic. None of the alternatives has presented a strong argument. One contender looks out of form. Another option is still inexplicably hanging around, like dust or mold. Meanwhile their leader, Pat Cummins, is injured and suddenly this feels like a unusually thin squad, missing authority or balance, the kind of effortless self-assurance that has often given Australia a lead before a ball is bowled.

Marnus’s Comeback

Here comes Labuschagne: a top-ranked Test batsman as just two years ago, just left out from the one-day team, the right person to bring stability to a fragile lineup. And we are advised this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne these days: a pared-down, no-frills Labuschagne, no longer as intensely fixated with small details. “I believe I have really stripped it back,” he said after his ton. “Less focused on technique, just what I must bat effectively.”

Of course, this is doubted. In all likelihood this is a rebrand that exists entirely in Labuschagne’s mind: still furiously stripping down that technique from all day, going deeper into fundamentals than any player has attempted. You want less technical? Marnus will spend months in the nets with trainers and footage, thoroughly reshaping his game into the least technical batter that has ever played. That’s the trait of the obsessed, and the characteristic that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating sportsmen in the game.

The Broader Picture

Perhaps before this highly uncertain historic rivalry, there is even a sort of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s endless focus. In England we have a team for whom technical study, not to mention self-review, is a forbidden topic. Trust your gut. Focus on the present. Smell the now.

In the other corner you have a player such as Labuschagne, a man terminally obsessed with the sport and magnificently unbothered by who knows about it, who finds cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who approaches this quirky game with just the right measure of odd devotion it demands.

His method paid off. During his focused era – from the moment he strode out to substitute for an injured the senior batsman at the famous ground in 2019 to through 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed to see the game on another level. To access it – through pure determination – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his time with Kent league cricket, colleagues noticed him on the game day resting on a bench in a trance-like state, mentally rehearsing all balls of his innings. Per cricket statisticians, during the initial period of his career a statistically unfathomable number of chances were missed when he batted. Somehow Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before fielders could respond to influence it.

Form Issues

It’s possible this was why his career began to disintegrate the moment he reached the summit. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a boundless, uncharted void before his eyes. Additionally – he began doubting his favorite stroke, got unable to move forward and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his mentor, D’Costa, reckons a focus on white-ball cricket started to undermine belief in his positioning. Good news: he’s recently omitted from the 50-over squad.

Certainly it’s relevant, too, that Labuschagne is a devoutly religious individual, an evangelical Christian who holds that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his task as one of achieving this peak performance, however enigmatic and inexplicable it may appear to the ordinary people.

This approach, to my mind, has always been the main point of difference between him and Smith, a inherently talented player