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The Australian batsman evenly coats butter on both sides of a slice of plain bread. “That’s the key,” he states as he brings down the lid of his sandwich grill. “Boom. Then you get it toasted on each side.” He lifts the lid to reveal a toasted delight of delicious perfection, the gooey cheese happily sizzling within. “So this is the trick of the trade,” he explains. At which point, he does something horrific and unspeakable.

At this stage, you may feel a glaze of ennui is beginning to appear in your eyes. The alarm bells of elaborate writing are flashing wildly. You’re likely conscious that Labuschagne made 160 runs for Queensland Bulls this week and is being widely discussed for an return to the Test side before the Ashes series.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about that. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to get through several lines of light-hearted musing about grilled cheese, plus an further tangential section of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the direct address. You feel resigned.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a serving plate and heads over the fridge. “Few try this,” he states, “but I genuinely enjoy the cold toastie. There, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, go for a hit, come back. Boom. It’s ideal.”

On-Field Matters

Alright, here’s the main point. How about we cover the sports aspect out of the way first? Little treat for making it this far. And while there may only be six weeks until the initial match, Labuschagne’s century against the Tigers – his third of the summer in all formats – feels significantly impactful.

Here’s an Australia top three clearly missing form and structure, revealed against the Proteas in the WTC final, exposed again in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was left out during that tour, but on some level you felt Australia were eager to bring him back at the earliest chance. Now he seems to have given them the right opportunity.

This represents a strategy Australia must implement. Khawaja has a single hundred in his recent 44 batting efforts. Sam Konstas looks hardly a Test match opener and rather like the attractive performer who might portray a cricketer in a Bollywood movie. None of the alternatives has presented a strong argument. McSweeney looks cooked. Another option is still surprisingly included, like dust or mold. Meanwhile their skipper, the pace bowler, is unfit and suddenly this appears as a surprisingly weak team, short of authority or balance, the kind of built-in belief that has often helped Australia dominate before a match begins.

Labuschagne’s Return

Enter Marnus: a top-ranked Test batsman as in the recent past, recently omitted from the 50-over squad, the ideal candidate to bring stability to a fragile lineup. And we are told this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne these days: a pared-down, back-to-basics 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 need to bat effectively.”

Of course, nobody truly believes this. Probably this is a new approach that exists only in Labuschagne’s mind: still constantly refining that method from morning to night, going further toward simplicity than anyone else would try. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will devote weeks in the training with trainers and footage, thoroughly reshaping his game into the simplest player that has ever existed. This is simply the trait of the obsessed, and the trait that has always made Labuschagne one of the most wildly absorbing sportsmen in the cricket.

The Broader Picture

Maybe before this highly uncertain England-Australia contest, there is even a type of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s endless focus. For England we have a side for whom detailed examination, not to mention self-review, is a forbidden topic. Trust your gut. Focus on the present. Embrace the current.

For Australia you have a individual like Labuschagne, a player terminally obsessed with cricket and totally indifferent by public perception, who observes cricket even in the gaps in the game, who handles this unusual pursuit with precisely the amount of quirky respect it deserves.

And it worked. During his intense period – from the moment he strode out to replace a concussed Smith at the famous ground in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne was able to see the game with greater insight. To reach it – through sheer intensity of will – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his time with Kent league cricket, colleagues noticed him on the morning of a game sitting on a park bench in a focused mindset, literally visualising each delivery of his innings. According to the analytics firm, during the first few years of his career a unusually large number of chances were dropped off his bat. In some way Labuschagne had predicted events before fielders could respond to change it.

Form Issues

Maybe 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. Also – to be fair – he stopped trusting his favorite stroke, got trapped on the crease and seemed to misjudge his positioning. But it’s connected really. Meanwhile his coach, his coach, reckons a emphasis on limited-overs started to weaken assurance in his alignment. Good news: he’s recently omitted from the one-day team.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a devoutly religious individual, an evangelical Christian who holds that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his job as one of accessing this state of flow, however enigmatic and inexplicable it may look to the ordinary people.

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