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The Australian batsman carefully spreads butter on each surface of a slice of white bread. “That’s the key,” he tells the camera as he brings down the lid of his sandwich grill. “Perfect. Then you get it golden on both sides.” He checks inside to reveal a golden square of pure toasted goodness, the melted cheese happily bubbling away. “And that’s the secret method,” he explains. At which point, he does something horrific and unspeakable.

By now, I sense a sense of disinterest is beginning to form across your eyes. The alarm bells of sportswriting pretension are going off. You’re likely conscious that Labuschagne made 160 runs for his state team this week and is being widely discussed for an national team comeback before the Ashes.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about cricket matters. But first – you now understand with frustration – you’re going to have to get through three paragraphs of light-hearted musing about toasties, plus an extra unwanted bonus paragraph of overly analytical commentary in the direct address. You groan once more.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a serving plate and heads over the fridge. “Few try this,” he announces, “but I genuinely enjoy the toastie cold. There, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, head to practice, come back. Perfect. It’s ideal.”

Back to Cricket

Alright, here’s the main point. Shall we get the cricket bit initially? Small reward for reading until now. And while there may still be six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s century against Tasmania – his third of the summer in all cricket – feels importantly timed.

We have an Australia top three badly short of consistency and technique, exposed by the Proteas in the World Test Championship final, exposed again in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was dropped during that series, but on a certain level you sensed Australia were keen to restore him at the soonest moment. Now he seems to have given them the ideal reason.

And this is a plan that Australia need to work. The opener has one century in his last 44 knocks. Konstas looks less like a first-innings batsman and closer to the attractive performer who might act as a batsman in a Indian film. Other candidates has presented a strong argument. Nathan McSweeney looks finished. Marcus Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like unwanted guests. Meanwhile their leader, Cummins, is hurt and suddenly this appears as a weirdly lightweight side, short of authority or balance, the kind of effortless self-assurance that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a ball is bowled.

Labuschagne’s Return

Here comes Labuschagne: a top-ranked Test batsman as just two years ago, freshly dropped from the ODI side, the perfect character to bring stability to a fragile lineup. And we are informed this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne now: a pared-down, back-to-basics Labuschagne, not as intensely fixated with technical minutiae. “I feel like I’ve really stripped it back,” he said after his hundred. “Not overthinking, just what I must make runs.”

Clearly, few accept this. Most likely this is a fresh image that exists entirely in Labuschagne’s mind: still endlessly adjusting that approach from all day, going more back to basics than any player has attempted. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will devote weeks in the practice sessions with coaches and video clips, thoroughly reshaping his game into the simplest player that has ever existed. This is just the quality of the focused, and the quality that has always made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating players in the sport.

The Broader Picture

Maybe before this inscrutably unpredictable Ashes series, there is even a type of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. In England we have a team for whom any kind of analysis, especially personal critique, is a forbidden topic. Go with instinct. Stay in the moment. Live in the instant.

In the other corner you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a man utterly absorbed with cricket and magnificently unbothered by public perception, who sees cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who treats this absurd sport with exactly the level of absurd reverence it demands.

His method paid off. During his intense period – from the instant he appeared to replace a concussed Steve Smith at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to until late 2022 – Labuschagne was able to see the game on another level. To access it – through sheer intensity of will – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his stint in English county cricket, fellow players saw him on the game day sitting on a park bench in a focused mindset, mentally rehearsing all balls of his batting stint. As per the analytics firm, during the initial period of his career a statistically unfathomable proportion of catches were dropped off his bat. Remarkably Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before others could react to change it.

Recent Challenges

Perhaps this was why his career began to disintegrate the point he became number one. There were no further goals to picture, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Additionally – he began doubting his signature shot, got unable to move forward and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his coach, his coach, believes a attention to shorter formats started to undermine belief in his technique. Good news: he’s just been dropped from the one-day team.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an evangelical Christian who thinks that this is all preordained, who thus sees his job as one of reaching this optimal zone, however enigmatic and inexplicable it may appear to the rest of us.

This approach, to my mind, has always been the main point of difference between him and Steve Smith, a more naturally gifted player