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Labuschagne evenly coats butter on both sides of a slice of soft bread. “That’s essential,” he explains as he lowers the lid of his sandwich grill. “There you go. Then you get it golden on each side.” He lifts the lid to reveal a toasted delight of pure toasted goodness, the bubbling cheese happily melting inside. “Here’s the secret method,” he declares. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

By now, it’s clear a layer of boredom is beginning to form across your eyes. The red lights of sportswriting pretension are flashing wildly. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne hit 160 for his state team this week and is being feverishly talked up for an return to the Test side before the Ashes series.

You likely wish to read more about cricket matters. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to get through three paragraphs of wobbling whimsy about toasties, plus an extra unwanted bonus paragraph of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the direct address. You feel resigned.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a serving plate and moves toward the fridge. “Few try this,” he announces, “but I actually like the cold toastie. There, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, go bat, come back. Alright. It’s ideal.”

The Cricket Context

Look, here’s the main point. Let’s address the match details out of the way first? Little treat for making it this far. And while there may still be six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s 100 runs against Tasmania – his third of the summer in various games – feels quietly decisive.

This is an Aussie opening batsmen clearly missing performance and method, revealed against South Africa in the World Test Championship final, shown up once more in the West Indies after that. Labuschagne was omitted during that series, but on one hand you felt Australia were eager to bring him back at the soonest moment. Now he looks to have given them the ideal reason.

And this is a plan that Australia need to work. Usman Khawaja has a single hundred in his recent 44 batting efforts. Konstas looks hardly a Test match opener and rather like the good-looking star who might play a Test opener in a Indian film. No other options has presented a strong argument. McSweeney looks finished. Another option is still inexplicably hanging around, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their captain, Cummins, is injured and suddenly this seems like a surprisingly weak team, short of command or stability, the kind of built-in belief that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a match begins.

The Batsman’s Revival

Step forward Marnus: a world No 1 Test batter as just two years ago, freshly dropped from the one-day team, the ideal candidate to restore order to a brittle empire. And we are advised this is a composed and reflective Labuschagne currently: a simplified, no-frills Labuschagne, no longer as intensely fixated with minor adjustments. “It seems I’ve really simplified things,” he said after his century. “Not really too technical, just what I need to score runs.”

Naturally, nobody truly believes this. In all likelihood this is a new approach that exists just in Labuschagne’s personal view: still constantly refining that technique from all day, going more back to basics than any player has attempted. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will take time in the nets with trainers and footage, exhaustively remoulding himself into the simplest player that has ever played. That’s the trait of the obsessed, and the characteristic that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the most wildly absorbing sportsmen in the game.

Wider Context

Perhaps before this highly uncertain historic rivalry, there is even a kind of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. For England we have a team for whom technical study, especially personal critique, is a kind of dangerous taboo. Feel the flavours. Stay in the moment. Smell the now.

On the opposite side you have a player such as Labuschagne, a individual terminally obsessed with the game and totally indifferent by who knows about it, who sees cricket even in the gaps in the game, who approaches this quirky game with exactly the level of absurd reverence it demands.

And it worked. During his focused era – from the instant he appeared to substitute for an injured Smith at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to until late 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game on another level. To tap into it – through sheer intensity of will – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his stint in club cricket, colleagues noticed him on the morning of a game resting on a bench in a focused mindset, mentally rehearsing all balls of his innings. Per cricket statisticians, during the early stages of his career a surprisingly high number of chances were spilled from his batting. In some way Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before fielders could respond to affect it.

Current Struggles

Maybe this was why his performance dipped the point he became number one. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a boundless, uncharted void before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he stopped trusting his cover drive, got trapped on the crease and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his trainer, his coach, thinks a emphasis on limited-overs started to weaken assurance in his alignment. Encouragingly: he’s recently omitted from the ODI side.

Surely it matters, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an evangelical Christian who thinks that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his task as one of achieving this peak performance, no matter how mysterious it may look to the rest of us.

This mindset, to my mind, has long been the main point of difference between him and the other batsman, a instinctive player