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The Australian batsman evenly coats butter on both sides of a slice of soft bread. “That’s the key,” he states as he closes the lid of his grilled cheese press. “There you go. Then you get it crisp on the outside.” He checks inside to reveal a perfectly browned of delicious perfection, the bubbling cheese happily sizzling within. “Here’s the trick of the trade,” he declares. At which point, he does something unexpected and strange.

At this stage, I sense a sense of disinterest is beginning to appear in your eyes. The warning signs of sportswriting pretension are blinking intensely. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne made 160 runs for Queensland this week and is being widely discussed for an Australian Test recall before the Ashes series.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about that. But first – you now understand with frustration – you’re going to have to endure several lines of wobbling whimsy about toasties, plus an additional unnecessary part of self-referential analysis in the second person. You feel resigned.

Marnus transfers the sandwich on to a serving plate and heads over the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he remarks, “but I personally prefer the toastie cold. Done, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, go for a hit, come back. Boom. It’s ideal.”

Back to Cricket

Look, to cut to the chase. How about we cover the cricket bit out of the way first? Small reward for your patience. And while there may only be six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s hundred against the Tasmanian side – his third of the summer in all cricket – feels significantly impactful.

We have an Australia top three seriously lacking consistency and technique, shown up by the Proteas in the WTC final, highlighted further in the West Indies after that. Labuschagne was dropped during that tour, but on some level you sensed Australia were keen to restore him at the earliest chance. Now he seems to have given them the ideal reason.

And this is a approach the team should follow. The opener has one century in his past 44 innings. Konstas looks less like a first-innings batsman and rather like the handsome actor who might act as a batsman in a Indian film. Other candidates has presented a strong argument. One contender looks cooked. Harris is still surprisingly included, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their skipper, the pace bowler, is hurt and suddenly this feels like a weirdly lightweight side, lacking authority or balance, the kind of natural confidence that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a game starts.

Marnus’s Comeback

Step forward Marnus: a world No 1 Test batter as just two years ago, just left out from the ODI side, the ideal candidate to restore order to a shaky team. And we are told this is a composed and reflective Labuschagne these days: a streamlined, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, less maniacally obsessed with minor adjustments. “I feel like I’ve really stripped it back,” he said after his century. “Not really too technical, just what I need to make runs.”

Clearly, nobody truly believes this. In all likelihood this is a new approach that exists just in Labuschagne’s mind: still constantly refining that approach from all day, going deeper into fundamentals than anyone has ever dared. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will devote weeks in the nets with trainers and footage, exhaustively remoulding himself into the simplest player that has ever been seen. That’s the nature of the addict, and the characteristic that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating sportsmen in the game.

Bigger Scene

Maybe before this highly uncertain historic rivalry, there is even a sort of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. In England we have a side for whom technical study, not to mention self-review, is a kind of dangerous taboo. Feel the flavours. Stay in the moment. Embrace the current.

For Australia you have a player such as Labuschagne, a man completely dedicated with the sport and wonderfully unconcerned by others’ opinions, who finds cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who treats this absurd sport with precisely the amount of absurd reverence it demands.

His method paid off. During his shamanic phase – from the moment he strode 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 access it – through pure determination – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his stint in Kent league cricket, fellow players saw him on the day of a match sitting on a park bench in a meditative condition, actually imagining each delivery of his time at the crease. Per Cricviz, during the early stages of his career a statistically unfathomable catches were missed when he batted. 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 career began to disintegrate the moment he reached the summit. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a empty space before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he stopped trusting his favorite stroke, got trapped on the crease and seemed to misjudge his positioning. But it’s connected really. Meanwhile his trainer, his coach, thinks a attention to shorter formats started to undermine belief in his technique. Positive development: he’s now excluded from the ODI side.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a devoutly religious individual, an committed Christian who believes that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his task as one of reaching this optimal zone, no matter how mysterious it may appear to the ordinary people.

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