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Marnus carefully spreads butter on both sides of a slice of soft bread. “That’s the secret,” he explains as he lowers the lid of his sandwich grill. “Boom. Then you get it crisp on the outside.” He opens the grill to reveal a toasted delight of ideal crispiness, the melted cheese happily melting inside. “And that’s the secret method,” he declares. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

By now, it’s clear a sense of disinterest is beginning to appear in your eyes. The red lights of overly fancy prose are blinking intensely. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne hit 160 for Queensland Bulls this week and is being feverishly talked up for an national team comeback 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 get through several lines of wobbling whimsy about toasties, plus an extra unwanted bonus paragraph of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the second person. You feel resigned.

Marnus transfers the sandwich on to a plate and moves toward the fridge. “Few try this,” he announces, “but I personally prefer the toastie cold. Boom, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, go for a hit, come back. Boom. Sandwich is perfect.”

Back to Cricket

Okay, to cut to the chase. Shall we get the sports aspect out of the way first? Small reward for reading until now. And while there may still be six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s century against the Tasmanian side – his third this season in all cricket – feels quietly decisive.

This is an Australia top three clearly missing performance and method, revealed against South Africa in the Test championship decider, exposed again in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was dropped during that series, but on one hand you sensed Australia were eager to bring him back at the earliest chance. Now he looks to have given them the right opportunity.

Here is a approach the team should follow. Usman Khawaja has just one 100 in his last 44 knocks. The young batsman looks hardly a Test opener and more like the good-looking star who might portray a cricketer in a Bollywood epic. None of the alternatives has presented a strong argument. Nathan McSweeney looks cooked. Another option is still inexplicably hanging around, like dust or mold. Meanwhile their leader, the pace bowler, is unfit and suddenly this feels like a weirdly lightweight side, lacking strength or equilibrium, the kind of effortless self-assurance that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a match begins.

Labuschagne’s Return

Step forward Marnus: a world No 1 Test batter as just two years ago, recently omitted from the ODI side, the ideal candidate to return structure to a fragile lineup. And we are informed this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne these days: a streamlined, back-to-basics Labuschagne, no longer as intensely fixated with minor adjustments. “I believe I have really simplified things,” he said after his hundred. “Not overthinking, just what I must bat effectively.”

Naturally, nobody truly believes this. Most likely this is a fresh image that exists only in Labuschagne’s own head: still furiously stripping down that technique from morning to night, going more back to basics than any player has attempted. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will spend months in the nets with advisors and replays, completely transforming into the most basic batsman that has ever existed. That’s the nature of the addict, and the quality that has long made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating players in the game.

Bigger Scene

Perhaps before this highly uncertain England-Australia contest, there is even a sort of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s constant dedication. On England’s side we have a squad for whom technical study, especially personal critique, is a forbidden topic. Trust your gut. Be where the ball is. Live in the instant.

On the opposite side you have a player such as Labuschagne, a player terminally obsessed with the sport and magnificently unbothered by public perception, who observes cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who treats this absurd sport with just the right measure of absurd reverence it demands.

His method paid off. During his shamanic phase – from the time he walked out to replace a concussed the senior batsman at Lord’s in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game with greater insight. To access it – through sheer intensity of will – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his stint in club cricket, colleagues noticed him on the day of a match resting on a bench in a focused mindset, mentally rehearsing every single ball of his innings. As per cricket statisticians, during the early stages of his career a statistically unfathomable number of chances were spilled from his batting. Somehow Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before others could react to influence it.

Recent Challenges

Perhaps this was why his form started to decline the point he became number one. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a empty space before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he stopped trusting his favorite stroke, got stuck in his crease and seemed to misjudge his positioning. But it’s part of the same issue. Meanwhile his mentor, D’Costa, reckons a attention to shorter formats started to undermine belief in his alignment. Good news: he’s now excluded 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 predetermined, who thus sees his role as one of achieving this peak performance, no matter how mysterious it may look to the rest of us.

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