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Labuschagne carefully spreads butter on both sides of a slice of soft bread. “That’s the secret,” he states as he closes the lid of his grilled cheese press. “There you go. Then you get it golden on both sides.” He checks inside to reveal a perfectly browned of delicious perfection, the gooey cheese happily bubbling away. “And that’s the trick of the trade,” he declares. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

Already, it’s clear a sense of disinterest is beginning to cover your eyes. The warning signs of sportswriting pretension are going off. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne scored 160 for Queensland Bulls this week and is being eagerly promoted for an national team comeback before the Ashes.

You probably want to read more about his performance. But first – you now understand with frustration – you’re going to have to endure several lines of wobbling whimsy about toasted sandwiches, plus an extra unwanted bonus paragraph of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the second person. You sigh again.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a serving plate and walks across the fridge. “It’s uncommon,” he announces, “but I actually like the toastie cold. There, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, go bat, come back. Boom. Toastie’s ready to go.”

Back to Cricket

Okay, to cut to the chase. How about we cover the sports aspect to begin with? Quick update for your patience. And while there may only be six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s hundred against the Tasmanian side – his third in recent months in all cricket – feels significantly impactful.

Here’s an Aussie opening batsmen seriously lacking form and structure, shown up by South Africa in the WTC final, shown up once more in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was omitted during that tour, but on one hand you gathered Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the earliest chance. Now he looks to have given them the ideal reason.

And this is a plan that Australia need to work. Khawaja has just one 100 in his past 44 innings. Sam Konstas 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 made a cogent case. McSweeney looks finished. Another option is still inexplicably hanging around, like unwanted guests. Meanwhile their captain, Cummins, is injured and suddenly this feels like a weirdly lightweight side, missing command or stability, the kind of effortless self-assurance that has often given Australia a lead before a ball is bowled.

Marnus’s Comeback

Enter Marnus: a world No 1 Test batter as just two years ago, recently omitted from the one-day team, the perfect character to return structure to a brittle empire. And we are advised this is a composed and reflective Labuschagne these days: a simplified, back-to-basics Labuschagne, no longer as maniacally obsessed with technical minutiae. “I believe I have really simplified things,” he said after his hundred. “Not overthinking, just what I should make runs.”

Clearly, few accept this. In all likelihood this is a new approach that exists only in Labuschagne’s mind: still endlessly adjusting that method from morning to night, going deeper into fundamentals than any player has attempted. You want less technical? Marnus will devote weeks in the nets with trainers and footage, completely transforming into the least technical batter that has ever existed. This is simply the nature of the addict, and the quality that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the most wildly absorbing sportsmen in the cricket.

Wider Context

Perhaps before this inscrutably unpredictable England-Australia contest, there is even a sort of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s endless focus. On England’s side we have a team for whom technical study, not to mention self-review, is a kind of dangerous taboo. Go with instinct. Focus on the present. Embrace the current.

In the other corner you have a individual like Labuschagne, a individual terminally obsessed with the sport and magnificently unbothered by others’ opinions, who sees cricket even in the moments outside play, who approaches this quirky game with exactly the level of quirky respect it demands.

His method paid off. During his intense period – from the time he walked out to come in for a hurt Steve Smith at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to until late 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed to see the game with greater insight. To tap into it – through absolute focus – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his days playing club cricket, fellow players saw him on the morning of a game sitting on a park bench in a focused mindset, literally visualising every single ball of his time at the crease. According to Cricviz, during the initial period of his career a surprisingly high catches were missed when he batted. Somehow Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before fielders could respond to affect it.

Current Struggles

It’s possible this was why his form started to decline the moment he reached the summit. There were no further goals to picture, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Furthermore – he lost faith in his cover drive, got trapped on the crease and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s connected really. Meanwhile his trainer, Neil D’Costa, believes a emphasis on limited-overs started to undermine belief in his technique. Good news: he’s recently omitted from the 50-over squad.

Surely it matters, too, that Labuschagne is a strongly faithful person, 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 mortal of us.

This mindset, to my mind, has long been the key distinction between him and Steve Smith, a inherently talented player