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Marnus evenly coats butter on each surface of a slice of white bread. “That’s the secret,” he states as he lowers the lid of his sandwich grill. “There you go. Then you get it crisp on both sides.” He lifts the lid to reveal a toasted delight of pure toasted goodness, the bubbling cheese happily sizzling within. “Here’s the trick of the trade,” he declares. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

By now, it’s clear a glaze of ennui is beginning to appear in your eyes. The alarm bells of overly fancy prose are going off. You’re likely conscious that Labuschagne scored 160 for Queensland Bulls this week and is being widely discussed for an national team comeback before the England-Australia contest.

You likely wish to read more about his performance. But first – you now understand with frustration – you’re going to have to get through several lines of playful digression about grilled cheese, plus an further tangential section of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the “you” perspective. You groan once more.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a plate and walks across the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he states, “but I genuinely enjoy the grilled sandwich chilled. Done, in the fridge. You allow the cheese to set, head to practice, come back. Perfect. Sandwich is perfect.”

Back to Cricket

Look, to cut to the chase. How about we cover the cricket bit initially? Quick update for reading until now. And while there may be just six weeks until the initial match, Labuschagne’s hundred against the Tigers – his third in recent months in all cricket – feels importantly timed.

We have an Aussie opening batsmen clearly missing performance and method, revealed against South Africa in the World Test Championship final, highlighted further 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 looks to have given them the ideal reason.

Here is a approach the team should follow. Usman Khawaja has one century in his past 44 innings. The young batsman looks less like a first-innings batsman and closer to the handsome actor who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood movie. Other candidates has presented a strong argument. McSweeney looks out of form. Marcus Harris is still oddly present, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their skipper, Cummins, is hurt and suddenly this seems like a surprisingly weak team, missing authority or balance, the kind of built-in belief that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a game starts.

Marnus’s Comeback

Here comes Labuschagne: a leading Test player as just two years ago, just left out from the 50-over squad, the perfect character to bring stability to a brittle empire. And we are advised this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne these days: a streamlined, no-frills Labuschagne, less extremely focused with technical minutiae. “I feel like I’ve really simplified things,” he said after his ton. “Not really too technical, just what I should make runs.”

Of course, this is doubted. In all likelihood this is a new approach that exists just in Labuschagne’s personal view: still constantly refining that approach from dawn to dusk, going deeper into fundamentals than anyone else would try. You want less technical? Marnus will take time in the training with coaches and video clips, completely transforming into the least technical batter that has ever been seen. That’s the nature of the addict, and the trait that has long made Labuschagne one of the highly engaging cricketers in the game.

Bigger Scene

Perhaps before this highly uncertain Ashes series, there is even a type of interesting contrast to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. In England we have a squad for whom any kind of analysis, not to mention self-review, is a forbidden topic. Go with instinct. Be where the ball is. Smell the now.

On the opposite side you have a individual like Labuschagne, a player completely dedicated with the game and magnificently unbothered by who knows about it, who finds cricket even in the gaps in the game, who treats this absurd sport with precisely the amount of odd devotion it demands.

His method paid off. During his shamanic phase – from the time he walked out to come in for a hurt Smith at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to until late 2022 – Labuschagne was able to see the game with greater insight. To reach it – through sheer intensity of will – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his time with club 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 batting stint. According to Cricviz, during the first few years of his career a surprisingly high catches were spilled from his batting. In some way Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before others could react to change it.

Current Struggles

Maybe this was why his performance dipped the time he achieved top ranking. There were no further goals to picture, just a empty space before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he lost faith in his cover drive, got trapped on the crease and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his trainer, D’Costa, reckons a emphasis on limited-overs started to undermine belief in his alignment. Good news: he’s recently omitted from the ODI side.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an committed Christian who holds that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his job as one of achieving this peak performance, however enigmatic and inexplicable it may look to the ordinary people.

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