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Labuschagne evenly coats butter on each surface of a slice of soft bread. “That’s the secret,” he tells the camera as he closes the lid of his grilled cheese press. “Boom. Then you get it golden on both sides.” He lifts the lid to reveal a toasted delight of pure toasted goodness, the bubbling cheese happily bubbling away. “So this is the trick of the trade,” he explains. At which point, he does something unexpected and strange.

By now, it’s clear a sense of disinterest is beginning to cover your eyes. The red lights of sportswriting pretension are going off. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne scored 160 for his state team this week and is being widely discussed for an national team comeback before the England-Australia contest.

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 sit through several lines of playful digression about toasted sandwiches, plus an additional unnecessary part of self-referential analysis in the direct address. You feel resigned.

Marnus transfers the sandwich on to a serving plate and walks across the fridge. “It’s uncommon,” he states, “but I genuinely enjoy the cold toastie. There, in the fridge. You allow the cheese to set, head to practice, come back. Alright. Toastie’s ready to go.”

On-Field Matters

Okay, to cut to the chase. Shall we get the match details to begin with? Small reward for making it this far. And while there may be just six weeks until the initial match, Labuschagne’s 100 runs against the Tigers – his third of the summer in various games – feels significantly impactful.

This is an Australian top order clearly missing consistency and technique, shown up by the Proteas in the Test championship decider, exposed again in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was left out during that trip, but on one hand you sensed Australia were keen to restore him at the soonest moment. Now he seems to have given them the perfect excuse.

And this is a plan that Australia need to work. The opener has just one 100 in his past 44 innings. The young batsman looks less like a first-innings batsman and closer to the good-looking star who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood epic. None of the alternatives has shown convincing form. McSweeney looks finished. Harris is still oddly present, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their captain, Cummins, is injured and suddenly this appears as a surprisingly weak team, missing command or stability, the kind of natural confidence that has often given Australia a lead before a match begins.

Marnus’s Comeback

Here comes Labuschagne: a world No 1 Test batter as recently as 2023, freshly dropped from the one-day team, the ideal candidate to bring stability to a shaky team. And we are advised this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne these days: a simplified, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, less intensely fixated with technical minutiae. “I feel like I’ve really cut out extras,” he said after his century. “Less focused on technique, just what I need to bat effectively.”

Of course, this is doubted. Most likely this is a new approach that exists only in Labuschagne’s personal view: still constantly refining that approach from dawn to dusk, going deeper into fundamentals than anyone else would try. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will spend months in the practice sessions with trainers and footage, completely transforming into the most basic batsman that has ever existed. This is just the trait of the obsessed, and the trait that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating sportsmen in the sport.

Wider Context

Perhaps before this very open historic rivalry, there is even a kind of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s endless focus. In England we have a team for whom any kind of analysis, not to mention self-review, is a kind of dangerous taboo. Go with instinct. Focus on the present. Embrace the current.

For Australia you have a player such as Labuschagne, a individual utterly absorbed with cricket and totally indifferent by who knows about it, who observes cricket even in the gaps in the game, who treats this absurd sport with just the right measure of quirky respect it requires.

This approach succeeded. During his intense period – from the time he walked out to replace a concussed the senior batsman at the famous ground in 2019 to through 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed to see the game more deeply. To tap into it – through sheer intensity of will – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his days playing Kent league cricket, colleagues noticed him on the game day sitting on a park bench in a meditative condition, mentally rehearsing all balls of his batting stint. As per Cricviz, during the first few years of his career a unusually large proportion of catches were missed when he batted. In some way Labuschagne had predicted events before anyone had a chance to affect it.

Current Struggles

Perhaps this was why his career began to disintegrate the moment he reached the summit. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Furthermore – he lost faith in his signature shot, got unable to move forward and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s connected really. Meanwhile his mentor, Neil D’Costa, believes a focus on white-ball cricket started to erode confidence in his technique. 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 religious believer who holds that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his job as one of achieving this peak performance, despite being puzzling it may look 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