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The Australian batsman evenly coats butter on each surface of a slice of plain bread. “That’s the key,” he tells the camera as he lowers the lid of his sandwich grill. “Boom. Then you get it toasted on each side.” He lifts the lid to reveal a golden square of delicious perfection, the bubbling cheese happily melting inside. “Here’s the trick of the trade,” he announces. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

Already, it’s clear a glaze of ennui is beginning to cover your eyes. The alarm bells of elaborate writing are going off. You’re likely conscious that Labuschagne hit 160 for his state team this week and is being widely discussed for an Australian Test recall before the England-Australia contest.

You likely wish to read more about cricket matters. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to endure three paragraphs of light-hearted musing about toasted sandwiches, plus an extra unwanted bonus paragraph of self-referential analysis in the second person. You groan once more.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a serving plate and walks across the fridge. “Few try this,” he states, “but I personally prefer the cold toastie. Done, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, go bat, come back. Alright. Sandwich is perfect.”

The Cricket Context

Alright, let’s try it like this. How about we cover the match details to begin with? Little treat for your patience. And while there may be just six weeks until the initial match, Labuschagne’s hundred against the Tigers – his third this season in all formats – feels significantly impactful.

Here’s an Australian top order clearly missing consistency and technique, revealed against the South African team in the WTC final, shown up once more in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was left out during that series, but on some level you sensed Australia were eager to bring him back at the soonest moment. Now he seems to have given them the right opportunity.

And this is a plan that Australia need to work. The opener has one century in his recent 44 batting efforts. The young batsman looks hardly a Test opener and closer to the attractive performer who might portray a cricketer in a Bollywood epic. Other candidates has presented a strong argument. McSweeney looks out of form. Harris is still oddly present, like dust or mold. Meanwhile their skipper, the pace bowler, is injured and suddenly this seems like a weirdly lightweight side, missing strength or equilibrium, the kind of natural confidence that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a ball is bowled.

The Batsman’s Revival

Enter Marnus: a top-ranked Test batsman as in the recent past, just left out from the 50-over squad, the perfect character to return structure to a fragile lineup. And we are informed this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne these days: a streamlined, back-to-basics Labuschagne, not as maniacally obsessed with small details. “I feel like I’ve really simplified things,” he said after his century. “Not overthinking, just what I must make runs.”

Clearly, this is doubted. Probably this is a rebrand that exists just in Labuschagne’s mind: still endlessly adjusting that method from dawn to dusk, 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 most basic batsman that has ever existed. That’s the quality of the focused, and the quality that has always made Labuschagne one of the highly engaging cricketers in the sport.

The Broader Picture

Perhaps before this highly uncertain Ashes series, there is even a sort of interesting contrast to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. On England’s side we have a team for whom detailed examination, especially personal critique, is a risky subject. Trust your gut. Focus on the present. Embrace the current.

On the opposite side you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a player utterly absorbed with the game and totally indifferent by others’ opinions, who finds cricket even in the gaps in the game, who approaches this quirky game with precisely the amount of absurd reverence it demands.

This approach succeeded. During his shamanic phase – from the instant he appeared to come in for a hurt Smith at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game more deeply. To reach it – through pure determination – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his days playing English county cricket, colleagues noticed him on the game day positioned on a seat in a focused mindset, actually imagining every single ball of his batting stint. According to Cricviz, during the first few years of his career a statistically unfathomable catches were dropped off his bat. In some way Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before others could react to affect it.

Recent Challenges

It’s possible this was why his performance dipped the point he became number one. There were no new heights to imagine, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he lost faith in his favorite stroke, got trapped on the crease and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s part of the same issue. Meanwhile his mentor, D’Costa, believes a focus on white-ball cricket started to erode confidence in his technique. Good news: he’s recently omitted from the 50-over squad.

Surely it matters, too, that Labuschagne is a devoutly religious individual, an committed Christian who thinks that this is all predetermined, who thus sees his task as one of reaching this optimal zone, despite being puzzling it may look to the mortal of us.

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