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Marnus methodically applies butter on the top and bottom of a slice of white bread. “That’s essential,” he explains as he lowers the lid of his grilled cheese press. “Boom. Then you get it toasted on each side.” He opens the grill to reveal a golden square of pure toasted goodness, the gooey cheese happily melting inside. “Here’s the key technique,” he declares. At which point, he does something horrific and unspeakable.

At this stage, I sense a layer of boredom is beginning to appear in your eyes. The warning signs of overly fancy prose are going off. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne scored 160 for Queensland this week and is being feverishly talked up for an national team comeback before the Ashes series.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about that. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to endure several lines of wobbling whimsy about toasted sandwiches, plus an further tangential section of overly analytical commentary in the direct address. You groan once more.

Marnus transfers the sandwich on to a serving plate and heads over the fridge. “It’s uncommon,” he announces, “but I personally prefer the grilled sandwich chilled. There, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, go for a hit, come back. Perfect. It’s ideal.”

The Cricket Context

Alright, here’s the main point. Let’s address the match details to begin with? Small reward for reading until now. And while there may still be six weeks until the initial match, Labuschagne’s hundred against the Tasmanian side – his third of the summer in various games – feels significantly impactful.

Here’s an Aussie opening batsmen seriously lacking performance and method, shown up by the Proteas in the WTC final, exposed again in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was left out during that tour, but on a certain level you sensed Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the earliest chance. Now he looks to have given them the perfect excuse.

Here is a strategy Australia must implement. The opener has a single hundred in his recent 44 batting efforts. Sam Konstas looks hardly a Test opener and closer to the attractive performer who might portray a cricketer in a Indian film. Other candidates has made a cogent case. One contender looks finished. Marcus Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their captain, Cummins, is unfit and suddenly this appears as a unusually thin squad, missing strength or equilibrium, the kind of built-in belief that has often given Australia a lead before a ball is bowled.

The Batsman’s Revival

Enter Marnus: a top-ranked Test batsman as just two years ago, just left out from the one-day team, the perfect character to restore order to a fragile lineup. And we are told this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne currently: a streamlined, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, no longer as maniacally obsessed with minor adjustments. “I feel like I’ve really cut out extras,” he said after his hundred. “Less focused on technique, just what I must bat effectively.”

Naturally, few accept this. Probably this is a rebrand that exists entirely in Labuschagne’s own head: still furiously stripping down that method from dawn to dusk, going further toward simplicity than any player has attempted. You want less technical? Marnus will take time in the training with coaches and video clips, exhaustively remoulding himself into the simplest player that has ever been seen. This is just the trait of the obsessed, and the quality that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the highly engaging sportsmen in the sport.

Wider Context

It could be before this highly uncertain England-Australia contest, there is even a kind of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s constant dedication. On England’s side we have a side for whom any kind of analysis, especially personal critique, is a kind of dangerous taboo. Feel the flavours. Focus on the present. Smell the now.

In the other corner you have a player such as Labuschagne, a individual utterly absorbed with the game and wonderfully unconcerned by who knows about it, who sees cricket even in the moments outside play, who treats this absurd sport with exactly the level of absurd reverence it demands.

This approach succeeded. During his shamanic phase – from the instant he appeared to substitute for an injured the senior batsman at the famous ground in 2019 to until late 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed to see the game on another level. To access it – through absolute focus – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his stint in Kent league cricket, teammates would find him on the day of a match resting on a bench in a focused mindset, literally visualising all balls of his batting stint. Per the analytics firm, during the initial period of his career a surprisingly high proportion of catches were missed when he batted. Remarkably Labuschagne had predicted events before others could react to change it.

Recent Challenges

Maybe this was why his career began to disintegrate the time he achieved top ranking. There were no new heights to imagine, just a boundless, uncharted void before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he stopped trusting his signature shot, got stuck in his crease and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s part of the same issue. Meanwhile his trainer, Neil D’Costa, 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 strongly faithful person, an religious believer who holds that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his role as one of accessing this state of flow, no matter how mysterious it may look to the rest of us.

This approach, to my mind, has long been the primary contrast between him and Smith, a instinctive player