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The Australian batsman carefully spreads butter on each surface of a slice of soft bread. “That’s the secret,” he tells the camera as he lowers the lid of his toastie maker. “There you go. Then you get it crisp on each side.” He checks inside to reveal a perfectly browned of pure toasted goodness, the gooey cheese happily melting inside. “And that’s the key technique,” he declares. At which point, he does something horrific and unspeakable.

At this stage, I sense a sense of disinterest is beginning to cover your eyes. The warning signs of overly fancy prose are going off. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne made 160 runs for his state team this week and is being feverishly talked up for an national team comeback before the England-Australia contest.

You probably want to read more about cricket matters. But first – you now understand with frustration – you’re going to have to endure a section of wobbling whimsy about toasted sandwiches, plus an further tangential section of self-referential analysis in the “you” perspective. You sigh again.

Marnus transfers the sandwich on to a plate and moves toward the fridge. “Few try this,” he remarks, “but I actually like the cold toastie. Boom, in the fridge. You allow the cheese to set, head to practice, come back. Boom. It’s ideal.”

The Cricket Context

Alright, to cut to the chase. How about we cover the cricket bit out of the way first? Little treat for reading until now. And while there may still be six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s hundred against the Tigers – his third of the summer in all formats – feels quietly decisive.

We have an Aussie opening batsmen badly short of form and structure, revealed against South Africa in the Test championship decider, shown up once more in the West Indies after that. Labuschagne was omitted during that series, but on some level you felt Australia were keen to restore him at the first opportunity. Now he seems to have given them the right opportunity.

Here is a approach the team should follow. Usman Khawaja has a single hundred in his last 44 knocks. The young batsman looks hardly a first-innings batsman and rather like the good-looking star who might portray a cricketer in a Bollywood epic. None of the alternatives has presented a strong argument. McSweeney looks out of form. Another option is still oddly present, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their leader, Pat Cummins, is injured and suddenly this appears as a unusually thin squad, missing authority or balance, the kind of natural confidence that has often given Australia a lead before a game starts.

The Batsman’s Revival

Enter Marnus: a leading Test player as just two years ago, freshly dropped from the 50-over squad, the ideal candidate to restore order to a brittle empire. And we are told this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne currently: a simplified, no-frills Labuschagne, not as extremely focused with minor adjustments. “It seems I’ve really cut out extras,” he said after his century. “Not really too technical, just what I must make runs.”

Of course, nobody truly believes this. Most likely this is a new approach that exists just in Labuschagne’s mind: still endlessly adjusting that technique from all day, going further toward simplicity than anyone has ever dared. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will take time in the nets with coaches and video clips, thoroughly reshaping his game into the simplest player that has ever been seen. That’s the nature of the addict, and the trait that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating sportsmen in the sport.

The Broader Picture

It could be before this very open Ashes series, there is even a kind of interesting contrast to Labuschagne’s constant dedication. In England we have a team for whom any kind of analysis, not to mention self-review, is a risky subject. Trust your gut. Be where the ball is. Live in the instant.

For Australia you have a individual like Labuschagne, a man completely dedicated with the sport and totally indifferent by others’ opinions, who observes cricket even in the gaps in the game, who handles this unusual pursuit with just the right measure of quirky respect it requires.

And it worked. During his shamanic phase – from the instant he appeared to replace a concussed the senior batsman at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to until late 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game more deeply. To tap into it – through sheer intensity of will – on a elevated, strange, passionate tier. During his days playing English county cricket, colleagues noticed him on the morning of a game resting on a bench in a focused mindset, literally visualising all balls of his innings. According to Cricviz, during the first few years of his career a surprisingly high proportion of catches were dropped off his bat. Remarkably Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before others could react to influence it.

Current Struggles

It’s possible this was why his form started to decline the moment he reached the summit. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a empty space before his eyes. Furthermore – he stopped trusting his signature shot, got trapped on the crease and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his mentor, Neil D’Costa, thinks a focus on white-ball cricket 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 man of deep religious faith, an religious believer who believes that this is all predetermined, who thus sees his role as one of achieving this peak performance, however enigmatic and inexplicable it may look to the rest of us.

This approach, to my mind, has long been the primary contrast between him and Steve Smith, a more naturally gifted player