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Labuschagne carefully spreads butter on the top and bottom of a slice of soft bread. “That’s the secret,” he tells the camera as he closes the lid of his sandwich grill. “There you go. Then you get it golden on both sides.” He lifts the lid to reveal a golden square of ideal crispiness, the gooey cheese happily melting inside. “So this is the key technique,” he declares. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

By now, I sense a layer of boredom is beginning to cover your eyes. The alarm bells of elaborate writing are flashing wildly. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne hit 160 for his state team this week and is being eagerly promoted for an Australian Test recall before the Ashes series.

You probably want to read more about his performance. But first – you now understand with frustration – you’re going to have to get through several lines of wobbling whimsy about grilled cheese, plus an further tangential section of self-referential analysis in the direct address. You groan once more.

He turns the sandwich on to a plate and moves toward the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he announces, “but I genuinely enjoy the grilled sandwich chilled. Done, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, go bat, come back. Perfect. Toastie’s ready to go.”

Back to Cricket

Okay, here’s the main point. 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 century against the Tigers – his third of the summer in all cricket – feels quietly decisive.

Here’s an Australian top order badly short of form and structure, exposed by the South African team in the World Test Championship final, shown up once more in the West Indies after that. Labuschagne was omitted during that tour, but on a certain level you sensed Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the first opportunity. Now he appears to have given them the right opportunity.

And this is a plan that Australia need to work. Usman Khawaja has a single hundred in his last 44 knocks. Konstas looks hardly a first-innings batsman and more like the attractive performer who might portray a cricketer in a Bollywood epic. None of the alternatives has made a cogent case. One contender looks finished. Harris is still surprisingly included, like unwanted guests. Meanwhile their captain, the pace bowler, is injured and suddenly this seems like a surprisingly weak team, missing command or stability, the kind of built-in belief that has often helped Australia dominate before a game starts.

The Batsman’s Revival

Here comes Labuschagne: a top-ranked Test batsman as in the recent past, just left out from the ODI side, the perfect character to restore order to a shaky team. And we are informed this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne these days: a simplified, no-frills Labuschagne, less extremely focused with minor adjustments. “I feel like I’ve really cut out extras,” he said after his hundred. “Not overthinking, just what I need to bat effectively.”

Of course, nobody truly believes this. In all likelihood this is a rebrand that exists entirely in Labuschagne’s personal view: still constantly refining that technique from dawn to dusk, going more back to basics than anyone has ever dared. You want less technical? Marnus will take time in the training with trainers and footage, completely transforming into the simplest player that has ever played. This is just the nature of the addict, and the trait that has always 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 kind of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s endless focus. On England’s side we have a side for whom technical study, not to mention self-review, is a risky subject. Trust your gut. Focus on the present. Embrace the current.

In the other corner you have a individual like Labuschagne, a man utterly absorbed with the sport and totally indifferent by others’ opinions, who observes cricket even in the moments outside play, who approaches this quirky game with exactly the level of odd devotion it demands.

His method paid off. During his focused era – from the time he walked out to substitute for an injured Smith at the famous ground in 2019 to through 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game more deeply. To reach it – through absolute focus – on a elevated, strange, passionate tier. During his days playing club cricket, colleagues noticed him on the morning of a game resting on a bench in a meditative condition, actually imagining all balls of his batting stint. According to the analytics firm, during the early stages of his career a statistically unfathomable number of chances were missed when he batted. Somehow Labuschagne had anticipated outcomes before fielders could respond to affect it.

Form Issues

Maybe this was why his performance dipped the point he became number one. There were no further goals to picture, just a empty space before his eyes. Furthermore – he stopped trusting his signature shot, got stuck in his crease and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s part of the same issue. Meanwhile his coach, D’Costa, thinks a attention to shorter formats started to undermine belief in his technique. Encouragingly: he’s just been dropped from the 50-over squad.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a strongly faithful person, an religious believer who thinks that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his task as one of accessing this state of flow, no matter how mysterious it may appear to the rest of us.

This mindset, to my mind, has long been the main point of difference between him and Steve Smith, a inherently talented player