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Labuschagne 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 toastie maker. “Boom. Then you get it toasted on each side.” He opens the grill to reveal a toasted delight of delicious perfection, the bubbling cheese happily sizzling within. “And that’s the key technique,” he announces. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

Already, it’s clear a glaze of ennui is beginning to appear in your eyes. The red lights of elaborate writing are blinking intensely. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne hit 160 for his state team this week and is being widely discussed for an return to the Test side before the England-Australia contest.

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 several lines of light-hearted musing about toasties, plus an extra unwanted bonus paragraph of self-referential analysis in the “you” perspective. You sigh again.

He turns the sandwich on to a plate and moves toward the fridge. “It’s uncommon,” he remarks, “but I genuinely enjoy the grilled sandwich chilled. Done, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, go for a hit, come back. Perfect. Sandwich is perfect.”

Back to Cricket

Okay, here’s the main point. Let’s address the cricket bit to begin with? Quick update for reading until now. And while there may be just six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s hundred against Tasmania – his third in recent months in all formats – feels significantly impactful.

We have an Australian top order badly short of consistency and technique, shown up by the South African team in the Test championship decider, highlighted further in the West Indies after that. Labuschagne was left out during that tour, but on one hand you felt Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the earliest chance. Now he looks to have given them the ideal reason.

Here is a strategy Australia must implement. Khawaja has one century in his last 44 knocks. The young batsman looks less like a Test match opener and closer to the good-looking star who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood epic. Other candidates has made a cogent case. One contender looks out of form. Marcus Harris is still surprisingly included, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their skipper, Cummins, is injured and suddenly this appears as a surprisingly weak team, missing authority or balance, the kind of natural confidence that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a match begins.

Labuschagne’s Return

Enter Marnus: a world No 1 Test batter as just two years ago, recently omitted from the one-day team, the ideal candidate to restore order to a brittle empire. And we are informed this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne these days: a simplified, no-frills Labuschagne, no longer as extremely focused with minor adjustments. “It seems I’ve really simplified things,” he said after his hundred. “Not overthinking, just what I must score runs.”

Of course, few accept this. In all likelihood this is a rebrand that exists just in Labuschagne’s mind: still furiously stripping down that technique from dawn to dusk, going deeper into fundamentals than anyone else would try. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will spend months in the practice sessions with advisors and replays, thoroughly reshaping his game into the simplest player that has ever existed. That’s the nature of the addict, and the characteristic that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating sportsmen in the sport.

Wider Context

Maybe before this highly uncertain historic rivalry, there is even a kind of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. For England we have a team for whom technical study, let alone self-analysis, is a forbidden topic. Trust your gut. Stay in the moment. Smell the now.

For Australia you have a player such as Labuschagne, a player completely dedicated with the sport and wonderfully unconcerned by public perception, who observes cricket even in the gaps in the game, who handles this unusual pursuit with precisely the amount of odd devotion it demands.

This approach succeeded. During his focused era – from the time he walked out to come in for a hurt the senior batsman at the famous ground in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game on another level. To reach it – through pure determination – on a elevated, strange, passionate tier. During his stint in English county cricket, fellow players saw him on the day of a match sitting on a park bench in a meditative condition, mentally rehearsing each delivery of his innings. As per the analytics firm, during the initial period of his career a statistically unfathomable proportion of catches were missed when he batted. Remarkably Labuschagne had predicted events before fielders could respond to influence it.

Form Issues

Perhaps this was why his career began to disintegrate the time he achieved top ranking. There were no new heights to imagine, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Furthermore – he stopped trusting his favorite stroke, got trapped on the crease and seemed to misjudge his positioning. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his coach, D’Costa, reckons a focus on white-ball cricket started to weaken assurance in his alignment. Positive development: he’s recently omitted from the ODI side.

Surely it matters, too, that Labuschagne is a strongly faithful person, an religious believer who holds that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his role as one of accessing this state of flow, no matter how mysterious it may seem to the ordinary people.

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