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The Australian batsman evenly coats butter on the top and bottom of a slice of soft bread. “That’s the secret,” he states as he closes the lid of his grilled cheese press. “There you go. Then you get it crisp on each side.” He lifts the lid to reveal a toasted delight of pure toasted goodness, the bubbling cheese happily sizzling within. “And that’s the key technique,” he explains. At which point, he does something unexpected and strange.

By now, it’s clear a glaze of ennui is beginning to appear in your eyes. The alarm bells of overly fancy prose are going off. You’re probably aware that Labuschagne hit 160 for his state team this week and is being widely discussed for an return to the Test side before the England-Australia contest.

You probably want to read more about cricket matters. But first – you now grasp with irritation – you’re going to have to get through several lines of light-hearted musing about grilled cheese, plus an further tangential section of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the “you” perspective. You groan once more.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a serving plate and heads over the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he remarks, “but I actually like the toastie cold. Done, in the fridge. You allow the cheese to set, go bat, come back. Boom. It’s ideal.”

Back to Cricket

Okay, to cut to the chase. Let’s address the match details initially? Small reward for your patience. And while there may only be six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s 100 runs against the Tigers – his third this season in various games – feels significantly impactful.

Here’s an Aussie opening batsmen badly short of performance and method, exposed by the Proteas in the Test championship decider, exposed again in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was omitted during that series, but on some level you felt Australia were eager to bring him back at the first opportunity. Now he appears to have given them the perfect excuse.

This represents a approach the team should follow. The opener has just one 100 in his last 44 knocks. Sam Konstas looks not quite a Test match opener and rather like the handsome actor who might act as a batsman in a Indian film. Other candidates has presented a strong argument. McSweeney looks cooked. Harris is still oddly present, like dust or mold. Meanwhile their captain, the pace bowler, is unfit and suddenly this feels like a surprisingly weak team, missing authority or balance, the kind of natural confidence that has often given Australia a lead before a match begins.

Marnus’s Comeback

Here comes Labuschagne: a world No 1 Test batter as just two years ago, freshly dropped from the one-day team, the perfect character to bring stability to a fragile lineup. And we are told this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne now: a simplified, back-to-basics Labuschagne, no longer as maniacally obsessed with technical minutiae. “It seems I’ve really stripped it back,” he said after his hundred. “Less focused on technique, just what I need to score runs.”

Naturally, few accept this. In all likelihood this is a rebrand that exists just in Labuschagne’s personal view: still constantly refining that technique from morning to night, going further toward simplicity than any player has attempted. Like basic approach? Marnus will take time in the practice sessions with advisors and replays, exhaustively remoulding himself into the simplest player that has ever been seen. That’s the quality of the focused, and the characteristic that has always made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating sportsmen in the cricket.

Bigger Scene

It could be before this inscrutably unpredictable historic rivalry, there is even a kind of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. In England we have a squad for whom any kind of analysis, not to mention self-review, is a forbidden topic. Feel the flavours. Be where the ball is. Live in the instant.

For Australia you have a player such as Labuschagne, a man terminally obsessed with cricket and wonderfully unconcerned by who knows about it, who observes cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who handles this unusual pursuit with exactly the level of odd devotion it deserves.

This approach succeeded. During his focused era – from the time he walked out to come in for a hurt Steve Smith at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne was able to see the game with greater insight. To tap into it – through pure determination – on a elevated, strange, passionate tier. During his stint in club cricket, teammates would find him on the game day resting on a bench in a trance-like state, literally visualising all balls of his batting stint. Per Cricviz, during the early stages of his career a statistically unfathomable number of chances were missed when he batted. Somehow Labuschagne had anticipated outcomes before fielders could respond to change it.

Form Issues

Perhaps 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. Furthermore – he began doubting his favorite stroke, got stuck in his crease and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his coach, Neil D’Costa, believes a focus on white-ball cricket started to erode confidence in his positioning. Positive development: he’s just been dropped from the ODI side.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an committed Christian who holds that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his job as one of achieving this peak performance, no matter how mysterious it may appear to the mortal of us.

This mindset, to my mind, has long been the key distinction between him and Smith, a more naturally gifted player