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The Australian batsman carefully spreads butter on the top and bottom of a slice of soft bread. “That’s the secret,” he explains as he brings down the lid of his sandwich grill. “Perfect. Then you get it golden on the outside.” He checks inside to reveal a golden square of pure toasted goodness, the gooey cheese happily sizzling within. “So this is the trick of the trade,” he declares. At which point, he does something horrific and unspeakable.

Already, you may feel a layer of boredom is beginning to form across your eyes. The red lights of sportswriting pretension are flashing wildly. You’re probably aware that Labuschagne made 160 runs for Queensland this week and is being feverishly talked up for an Australian Test recall before the Ashes series.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about his performance. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to endure a section of light-hearted musing about grilled cheese, plus an additional unnecessary part of overly analytical commentary in the second person. You groan once more.

He turns the sandwich on to a plate and walks across the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he remarks, “but I actually like the cold toastie. Done, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, go for a hit, come back. Boom. Toastie’s ready to go.”

The Cricket Context

Look, to cut to the chase. Shall we get the cricket bit initially? Little treat for reading until now. And while there may still be six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s 100 runs against the Tasmanian side – his third this season in various games – feels importantly timed.

Here’s an Australian top order seriously lacking form and structure, shown up by the Proteas in the World Test Championship final, exposed again in the West Indies after that. Labuschagne was omitted during that trip, but on a certain level you felt Australia were eager to bring him back at the soonest moment. Now he seems to have given them the ideal reason.

This represents a plan that Australia need to work. The opener has a single hundred in his recent 44 batting efforts. The young batsman looks not quite a first-innings batsman and more like the handsome actor who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood epic. None of the alternatives has presented a strong argument. Nathan McSweeney looks finished. Marcus Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their leader, the pace bowler, is injured and suddenly this appears as a unusually thin squad, lacking strength or equilibrium, the kind of natural confidence that has often given Australia a lead before a match begins.

Marnus’s Comeback

Step forward Marnus: a world No 1 Test batter as just two years ago, freshly dropped from the ODI side, the ideal candidate to restore order to a brittle empire. And we are advised this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne currently: a streamlined, back-to-basics Labuschagne, no longer as intensely fixated with technical minutiae. “I believe I have really stripped it back,” he said after his hundred. “Not really too technical, just what I need to make runs.”

Naturally, nobody truly believes this. In all likelihood this is a fresh image that exists only in Labuschagne’s mind: still constantly refining that method from all day, going deeper into fundamentals than anyone has ever dared. You want less technical? Marnus will devote weeks in the training with advisors and replays, completely transforming into the most basic batsman that has ever been seen. This is simply the quality of the focused, and the characteristic that has always made Labuschagne one of the most wildly absorbing cricketers in the sport.

Bigger Scene

It could be before this inscrutably unpredictable England-Australia contest, there is even a type of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s constant dedication. In England we have a squad for whom detailed examination, not to mention self-review, is a risky subject. Trust your gut. Stay in the moment. Smell the now.

In the other corner you have a player such as Labuschagne, a individual completely dedicated with the sport and totally indifferent by who knows about it, who finds cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who approaches this quirky game with precisely the amount of odd devotion it requires.

His method paid off. During his intense period – from the time he walked out to substitute for an injured Steve Smith at Lord’s in 2019 to until late 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed to see the game on another level. To access it – through pure determination – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his time with English county cricket, teammates would find him on the morning of a game resting on a bench in a meditative condition, mentally rehearsing all balls of his batting stint. Per Cricviz, during the early stages of his career a unusually large proportion of catches were missed when he batted. Somehow Labuschagne had predicted events before others could react to change it.

Current Struggles

It’s possible this was why his form started to decline the point he became number one. There were no new heights to imagine, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he began doubting his favorite stroke, got stuck in his crease and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s connected really. Meanwhile his mentor, D’Costa, believes a focus on white-ball cricket started to undermine belief in his technique. Good news: he’s recently omitted from the one-day team.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a devoutly religious individual, an committed Christian who holds that this is all predetermined, who thus sees his task as one of accessing this state of flow, no matter how mysterious it may appear to the mortal of us.

This approach, to my mind, has long been the key distinction between him and Steve Smith, a inherently talented player