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The Australian batsman carefully spreads butter on both sides of a slice of white bread. “That’s the secret,” he tells the camera as he lowers the lid of his sandwich grill. “Perfect. Then you get it toasted on each side.” He lifts the lid to reveal a golden square of pure toasted goodness, the melted cheese happily bubbling away. “And that’s the key technique,” he announces. At which point, he does something unexpected and strange.

At this stage, you may feel a sense of disinterest is beginning to form across your eyes. The alarm bells of elaborate writing are blinking intensely. You’re likely conscious that Labuschagne hit 160 for Queensland Bulls this week and is being feverishly talked up for an national team comeback before the England-Australia contest.

You probably want to read more about cricket matters. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to sit through three paragraphs of playful digression about toasted sandwiches, plus an extra unwanted bonus paragraph of overly analytical commentary in the second person. You feel resigned.

He turns the sandwich on to a dish and walks across the fridge. “It’s uncommon,” he states, “but I personally prefer the grilled sandwich chilled. Boom, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, go bat, come back. Boom. Sandwich is perfect.”

The Cricket Context

Look, let’s try it like this. Let’s address the sports aspect out of the way first? Small reward for reading until now. And while there may be just six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s 100 runs against Tasmania – his third this season in various games – feels significantly impactful.

Here’s an Australia top three seriously lacking performance and method, shown up by the Proteas in the Test championship decider, exposed again in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was left out during that trip, but on one hand you gathered Australia were keen to restore him at the soonest moment. Now he seems to have given them the ideal reason.

Here is a approach the team should follow. Khawaja has a single hundred in his recent 44 batting efforts. Sam Konstas looks hardly a first-innings batsman and closer to the good-looking star who might portray a cricketer in a Indian film. Other candidates has shown convincing form. Nathan McSweeney looks cooked. Another option is still oddly present, like dust or mold. Meanwhile their captain, Pat Cummins, is injured and suddenly this feels like a weirdly lightweight side, lacking authority or balance, the kind of built-in belief that has often given Australia a lead before a game starts.

The Batsman’s Revival

Step forward Marnus: a world No 1 Test batter as in the recent past, just left out from the one-day team, the right person to return structure to a fragile lineup. And we are told this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne now: a pared-down, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, no longer as intensely fixated with technical minutiae. “I believe I have really stripped it back,” he said after his ton. “Less focused on technique, just what I should bat effectively.”

Of course, this is doubted. Most likely this is a rebrand that exists only in Labuschagne’s mind: still endlessly adjusting that approach from dawn to dusk, going deeper into fundamentals than anyone else would try. Like basic approach? Marnus will devote weeks in the practice sessions with trainers and footage, thoroughly reshaping his game into the simplest player that has ever been seen. That’s the trait of the obsessed, and the characteristic that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating cricketers in the cricket.

The Broader Picture

Maybe before this very open historic rivalry, there is even a kind of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s constant dedication. On England’s side we have a team for whom technical study, not to mention self-review, is a risky subject. Trust your gut. Stay in the moment. Smell the now.

On the opposite side you have a player such as Labuschagne, a individual completely dedicated with the sport and wonderfully unconcerned by who knows about it, who sees cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who treats this absurd sport with exactly the level of odd devotion it requires.

This approach succeeded. During his focused era – from the instant he appeared to come in for a hurt Steve Smith at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game on another level. To tap into it – through absolute focus – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his stint in club cricket, fellow players saw him on the day of a match positioned on a seat in a trance-like state, literally visualising all balls of his innings. As per cricket statisticians, during the initial period of his career a statistically unfathomable 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 point he became number one. There were no new heights to imagine, just a boundless, uncharted void before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he lost faith in his cover drive, got trapped on the crease and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s connected really. Meanwhile his trainer, Neil D’Costa, thinks a focus on white-ball cricket started to weaken assurance in his positioning. Encouragingly: he’s just been dropped from the ODI side.

Certainly it’s relevant, too, that Labuschagne is a devoutly religious individual, an religious believer who thinks that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his task as one of achieving this peak performance, no matter how mysterious it may seem to the ordinary people.

This approach, to my mind, has long been the primary contrast between him and Smith, a inherently talented player