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The Australian batsman methodically applies butter on the top and bottom of a slice of plain bread. “That’s the key,” he states as he closes the lid of his grilled cheese press. “Boom. Then you get it toasted on both sides.” He checks inside to reveal a golden square of ideal crispiness, the bubbling cheese happily bubbling away. “Here’s the secret method,” he announces. At which point, he does something horrific and unspeakable.

At this stage, it’s clear a sense of disinterest is beginning to form across your eyes. The alarm bells of overly fancy prose are going off. You’re probably aware that Labuschagne made 160 runs for his state team this week and is being eagerly promoted 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 understand with frustration – you’re going to have to get through several lines of light-hearted musing about grilled cheese, plus an extra unwanted bonus paragraph of self-referential analysis in the second person. You groan once more.

He turns the sandwich on to a serving plate and heads over the fridge. “Few try this,” he announces, “but I actually like the grilled sandwich chilled. There, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, head to practice, come back. Boom. Sandwich is perfect.”

Back to Cricket

Alright, to cut to the chase. Let’s address the cricket bit initially? Little treat for your patience. And while there may be just six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s 100 runs against Tasmania – his third in recent months in all cricket – feels quietly decisive.

This is an Australian top order seriously lacking consistency and technique, revealed against the Proteas in the Test championship decider, highlighted further in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was left out during that tour, but on some level you sensed Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the earliest chance. Now he seems to have given them the right opportunity.

This represents a plan that Australia need to work. Usman Khawaja has one century in his last 44 knocks. The young batsman looks not quite a first-innings batsman and closer to the attractive performer who might portray a cricketer in a Bollywood movie. None of the alternatives has shown convincing form. Nathan McSweeney looks finished. Harris is still surprisingly included, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their leader, Pat Cummins, is unfit and suddenly this feels like a unusually thin squad, short of authority or balance, the kind of built-in belief that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a game starts.

The Batsman’s Revival

Step forward Marnus: a top-ranked Test batsman as recently as 2023, recently omitted from the one-day team, the ideal candidate to return structure to a brittle empire. And we are told this is a composed and reflective Labuschagne now: a pared-down, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, no longer as maniacally obsessed with technical minutiae. “It seems I’ve really stripped it back,” he said after his ton. “Less focused on technique, just what I must make runs.”

Of course, this is doubted. In all likelihood this is a fresh image that exists only in Labuschagne’s own head: still endlessly adjusting that technique from morning to night, going further toward simplicity than anyone has ever dared. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will spend months in the practice sessions with advisors and replays, exhaustively remoulding himself into the simplest player that has ever existed. This is simply the quality of the focused, and the characteristic that has always made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating sportsmen in the sport.

Bigger Scene

Perhaps before this inscrutably unpredictable England-Australia contest, there is even a sort of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s endless focus. For England we have a team for whom any kind of analysis, not to mention self-review, is a risky subject. Trust your gut. Focus on the present. Smell the now.

In the other corner you have a individual like Labuschagne, a player terminally obsessed with the sport and wonderfully unconcerned by others’ opinions, who finds cricket even in the gaps in the game, who handles this unusual pursuit with precisely the amount of quirky respect it requires.

This approach succeeded. During his shamanic phase – from the moment he strode out to substitute for an injured the senior batsman at Lord’s in 2019 to until late 2022 – Labuschagne was able to see the game on another level. To reach it – through sheer intensity of will – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his stint in Kent league cricket, fellow players saw him on the morning of a game resting on a bench in a trance-like state, literally visualising every single ball of his innings. Per cricket statisticians, during the initial period of his career a surprisingly high proportion of catches were missed when he batted. Remarkably Labuschagne had predicted events before fielders could respond to influence it.

Recent Challenges

Maybe this was why his performance dipped the moment he reached the summit. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a boundless, uncharted void before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he stopped trusting his cover drive, got stuck in his crease and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s part of the same issue. Meanwhile his coach, D’Costa, thinks a focus on white-ball cricket started to weaken assurance in his alignment. Good news: he’s now excluded from the one-day team.

Surely it matters, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an committed Christian who believes that this is all predetermined, who thus sees his job as one of accessing this state of flow, no matter how mysterious it may seem to the ordinary people.

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