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The Australian batsman evenly coats butter on both sides of a slice of plain bread. “That’s the key,” he explains as he brings down the lid of his grilled cheese press. “Boom. Then you get it toasted on both sides.” He lifts the lid to reveal a perfectly browned of delicious perfection, the melted cheese happily bubbling away. “And that’s the secret method,” he announces. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

Already, I sense a layer of boredom is beginning to form across your eyes. The red lights of sportswriting pretension are blinking intensely. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne made 160 runs for Queensland this week and is being eagerly promoted for an national team comeback before the Ashes series.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about that. But first – you now grasp with irritation – you’re going to have to endure three paragraphs of playful digression about toasted sandwiches, plus an additional unnecessary part of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the “you” perspective. You sigh again.

Marnus transfers the sandwich on to a dish and heads over the fridge. “It’s uncommon,” he announces, “but I personally prefer the grilled sandwich chilled. Done, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, head to practice, come back. Perfect. Toastie’s ready to go.”

Back to Cricket

Alright, here’s the main point. Shall we get the sports aspect out of the way first? Little treat for making it this far. And while there may only be six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s hundred against the Tasmanian side – his third this season in various games – feels quietly decisive.

This is an Australia top three seriously lacking performance and method, revealed against the South African team in the World Test Championship final, highlighted further in the West Indies after that. Labuschagne was dropped during that trip, but on a certain level you gathered Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the first opportunity. Now he appears to have given them the perfect excuse.

This represents a approach the team should follow. The opener has a single hundred in his recent 44 batting efforts. Sam Konstas looks less like a Test opener and rather like the attractive performer who might play a Test opener in a Indian film. None of the alternatives has presented a strong argument. Nathan McSweeney looks cooked. Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their leader, Pat Cummins, is hurt and suddenly this appears as a unusually thin squad, lacking strength or equilibrium, the kind of effortless self-assurance that has often helped Australia dominate before a match begins.

Labuschagne’s Return

Enter Marnus: a top-ranked Test batsman as recently as 2023, just left out from the ODI side, the perfect character to restore order to a shaky team. And we are told this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne currently: a streamlined, back-to-basics Labuschagne, less extremely focused with technical minutiae. “I feel like I’ve really cut out extras,” he said after his hundred. “Not overthinking, just what I need to make runs.”

Clearly, this is doubted. Probably this is a fresh image that exists only in Labuschagne’s mind: still endlessly adjusting that approach from morning to night, going more back to basics than anyone else would try. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will take time in the nets with coaches and video clips, exhaustively remoulding himself into the simplest player that has ever been seen. This is simply the nature of the addict, and the quality that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating cricketers in the cricket.

Bigger Scene

Maybe before this inscrutably unpredictable historic rivalry, there is even a sort of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. On England’s side we have a side for whom detailed examination, let alone self-analysis, is a forbidden topic. Trust your gut. Be where the ball is. Embrace the current.

On the opposite side you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a individual utterly absorbed with the game and wonderfully unconcerned by public perception, who finds cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who treats this absurd sport with just the right measure of odd devotion it requires.

And it worked. During his focused era – from the moment he strode out to substitute for an injured Steve Smith at the famous ground in 2019 to around the end of 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 days playing English county cricket, fellow players saw him on the game day resting on a bench in a meditative condition, mentally rehearsing every single ball of his time at the crease. According to Cricviz, during the initial period of his career a unusually large number of chances were dropped off his bat. In some way Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before anyone had a chance to affect it.

Form Issues

It’s possible this was why his career began to disintegrate the time he achieved top ranking. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Furthermore – he began doubting his signature shot, got trapped on the crease and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s part of the same issue. Meanwhile his trainer, Neil D’Costa, reckons a emphasis on limited-overs started to erode confidence in his alignment. Positive development: he’s recently omitted from the one-day team.

Surely it matters, too, that Labuschagne is a devoutly religious individual, an religious believer who thinks that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his role as one of reaching this optimal zone, no matter how mysterious it may look to the mortal of us.

This mindset, to my mind, has long been the key distinction between him and the other batsman, a more naturally gifted player