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The Australian batsman methodically applies butter on the top and bottom of a slice of white bread. “That’s the key,” he explains as he lowers the lid of his grilled cheese press. “Perfect. Then you get it crisp on both sides.” He opens the grill to reveal a toasted delight of pure toasted goodness, the melted cheese happily melting inside. “And that’s the secret method,” he explains. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

By now, you may feel a sense of disinterest is beginning to form across your eyes. The warning signs of sportswriting pretension are flashing wildly. You’re probably aware that Labuschagne hit 160 for his state team this week and is being eagerly promoted for an national team comeback before the Ashes.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about his performance. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to get through three paragraphs of wobbling whimsy about toasted sandwiches, plus an further tangential section of self-referential analysis in the second person. You sigh again.

He turns the sandwich on to a plate and walks across the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he states, “but I genuinely enjoy the grilled sandwich chilled. There, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, go bat, come back. Perfect. Sandwich is perfect.”

The Cricket Context

Look, here’s the main point. How about we cover the cricket bit to begin with? Quick update for your patience. And while there may still be six weeks until the initial match, Labuschagne’s hundred against the Tigers – his third this season in all formats – feels significantly impactful.

Here’s an Australian top order clearly missing form and structure, shown up by the South African team in the Test championship decider, highlighted further in the West Indies after that. Labuschagne was dropped during that trip, but on some level you felt Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the first opportunity. Now he looks to have given them the right opportunity.

Here is 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 closer to the good-looking star who might portray a cricketer in a Bollywood movie. Other candidates has made a cogent case. McSweeney looks cooked. Marcus Harris is still surprisingly included, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their captain, Pat Cummins, is hurt and suddenly this seems like a unusually thin squad, short of command or stability, the kind of effortless self-assurance that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a match begins.

Marnus’s Comeback

Step forward Marnus: a leading Test player as in the recent past, just left out from the 50-over squad, the ideal candidate to return structure to a brittle empire. And we are told this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne these days: a streamlined, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, less extremely focused with minor adjustments. “I believe I have really simplified things,” he said after his hundred. “Less focused on technique, just what I must make runs.”

Naturally, few accept this. Most likely this is a rebrand that exists just in Labuschagne’s personal view: still furiously stripping down that method from dawn to dusk, going further toward simplicity than any player has attempted. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will devote weeks in the nets with advisors and replays, completely transforming into the simplest player that has ever existed. This is simply the trait of the obsessed, and the characteristic that has always made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating sportsmen in the cricket.

Wider Context

Perhaps before this inscrutably unpredictable England-Australia contest, there is even a sort of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s constant dedication. For England we have a team for whom any kind of analysis, let alone self-analysis, is a forbidden topic. Trust your gut. Stay in the moment. Embrace the current.

On the opposite side you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a player utterly absorbed with the sport and totally indifferent by public perception, who observes cricket even in the moments outside play, who handles this unusual pursuit with precisely the amount of absurd reverence it demands.

And it worked. During his intense period – from the moment he strode out to substitute for an injured the senior batsman at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to until late 2022 – Labuschagne was able to see the game more deeply. To reach it – through pure determination – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his time with English county cricket, fellow players saw him on the game day positioned on a seat in a trance-like state, actually imagining every single ball of his time at the crease. As per cricket statisticians, during the first few years of his career a surprisingly high catches were spilled from his batting. Somehow Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before fielders could respond to affect it.

Recent Challenges

It’s possible this was why his career began to disintegrate the moment he reached the summit. There were no new heights to imagine, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Furthermore – he lost faith in his signature shot, got stuck in his crease and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s connected really. Meanwhile his trainer, his coach, thinks a focus on white-ball cricket started to erode confidence in his alignment. Good news: he’s just been dropped from the one-day team.

Certainly it’s relevant, too, that Labuschagne is a devoutly religious individual, an committed Christian who believes that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his role as one of achieving this peak performance, no matter how mysterious it may seem to the mortal of us.

This approach, to my mind, has consistently been the key distinction between him and the other batsman, a more naturally gifted player