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Labuschagne evenly coats butter on the top and bottom of a slice of plain bread. “That’s essential,” he states as he lowers the lid of his grilled cheese press. “Boom. Then you get it crisp on both sides.” He lifts the lid to reveal a golden square of pure toasted goodness, the melted cheese happily melting inside. “And that’s the trick of the trade,” he announces. At which point, he does something horrific and unspeakable.

By now, I sense a glaze of ennui is beginning to cover your eyes. The alarm bells of overly fancy prose are flashing wildly. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne made 160 runs for Queensland this week and is being feverishly talked up for an Australian Test recall before the Ashes.

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 three paragraphs of playful digression about toasted sandwiches, plus an additional unnecessary part of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the “you” perspective. You groan once more.

He turns the sandwich on to a serving plate and walks across the fridge. “Few try this,” he states, “but I genuinely enjoy the toastie cold. Boom, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, go bat, come back. Alright. It’s ideal.”

The Cricket Context

Okay, to cut to the chase. Let’s address the cricket bit initially? Quick update for your patience. And while there may only be six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s 100 runs against the Tasmanian side – his third this season in all cricket – feels quietly decisive.

We have an Australian top order badly short of consistency and technique, revealed against South Africa in the World Test Championship final, shown up once more in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was omitted during that trip, but on some level you felt Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the soonest moment. Now he looks to have given them the right opportunity.

This represents a approach the team should follow. The opener has one century in his last 44 knocks. Sam Konstas looks less like a first-innings batsman and more like the attractive performer who might portray a cricketer in a Bollywood movie. None of the alternatives has made a cogent case. One contender looks out of form. Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their leader, Pat Cummins, is injured and suddenly this appears as a weirdly lightweight side, missing command or stability, the kind of built-in belief that has often given Australia a lead before a game starts.

Labuschagne’s Return

Step forward Marnus: a world No 1 Test batter as in the recent past, freshly dropped from the ODI side, the right person to restore order to a fragile lineup. And we are told this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne now: a streamlined, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, no longer as extremely focused with technical minutiae. “I believe I have really cut out extras,” he said after his ton. “Not really too technical, just what I should score runs.”

Of course, nobody truly believes this. Most likely this is a new approach that exists entirely in Labuschagne’s own head: still furiously stripping down that method from all day, going more back to basics than anyone has ever dared. You want less technical? Marnus will take time in the nets with advisors and replays, exhaustively remoulding himself into the least technical batter that has ever played. That’s the nature of the addict, and the quality that has always made Labuschagne one of the most wildly absorbing players in the game.

Wider Context

Maybe before this highly uncertain historic rivalry, there is even a sort of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s constant dedication. On England’s side we have a side for whom technical study, not to mention self-review, is a kind of dangerous taboo. Trust your gut. Stay in the moment. Smell the now.

In the other corner you have a player such as Labuschagne, a man utterly absorbed with the sport and magnificently unbothered by others’ opinions, who finds cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who treats this absurd sport with just the right measure of odd devotion it demands.

And it worked. During his shamanic phase – from the moment he strode out to come in for a hurt the senior batsman at the famous ground in 2019 to until late 2022 – Labuschagne was able to see the game with greater insight. To access it – through pure determination – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his time with Kent league cricket, teammates would find him on the morning of a game sitting on a park bench in a focused mindset, mentally rehearsing all balls of his time at the crease. According to the analytics firm, during the first few years of his career a unusually large proportion of catches were dropped off his bat. Somehow Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before anyone had a chance to affect it.

Current Struggles

Perhaps this was why his career began to disintegrate the point he became number one. There were no further goals to picture, just a boundless, uncharted void before his eyes. Furthermore – he stopped trusting his favorite stroke, got stuck in his crease and seemed to misjudge his positioning. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his coach, Neil D’Costa, thinks a emphasis on limited-overs started to undermine belief in his positioning. Positive development: he’s recently omitted from the 50-over squad.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a strongly faithful person, an religious believer who holds that this is all predetermined, who thus sees his task as one of achieving this peak performance, however enigmatic and inexplicable it may look to the rest of us.

This approach, to my mind, has long been the key distinction between him and the other batsman, a instinctive player