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The Australian batsman carefully spreads butter on each surface of a slice of white bread. “That’s the key,” he explains as he lowers the lid of his sandwich grill. “Perfect. Then you get it crisp on the outside.” He checks inside to reveal a toasted delight of pure toasted goodness, the melted cheese happily melting inside. “And that’s the key technique,” he announces. At which point, he does something unexpected and strange.

By now, you may feel a layer of boredom is beginning to appear in your eyes. The warning signs of sportswriting pretension are flashing wildly. You’re probably aware that Labuschagne scored 160 for his state team this week and is being eagerly promoted for an Australian Test recall before the Ashes series.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about cricket matters. But first – you now grasp with irritation – you’re going to have to endure several lines of playful digression about toasted sandwiches, plus an additional unnecessary part of overly analytical commentary in the second person. You feel resigned.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a dish and walks across the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he states, “but I personally prefer the cold toastie. Boom, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, head to practice, come back. Perfect. Sandwich is perfect.”

Back to Cricket

Alright, to cut to the chase. How about we cover the cricket bit out of the way first? Quick update for reading until now. And while there may only be six weeks until the initial match, Labuschagne’s hundred against Tasmania – his third in recent months in all formats – feels quietly decisive.

We have an Aussie opening batsmen seriously lacking performance and method, exposed by the Proteas in the Test championship decider, highlighted further in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was dropped during that trip, but on a certain level you felt Australia were keen to restore him at the earliest chance. Now he seems to have given them the perfect excuse.

Here is a strategy Australia must implement. Khawaja has a single hundred in his last 44 knocks. The young batsman looks not quite a Test match opener and rather like the handsome actor who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood epic. Other candidates has presented a strong argument. Nathan McSweeney looks finished. Harris is still oddly present, like unwanted guests. Meanwhile their skipper, the pace bowler, is injured and suddenly this appears as a unusually thin squad, short of authority or balance, the kind of natural confidence that has often helped Australia dominate before a game starts.

The Batsman’s Revival

Enter Marnus: a leading Test player as just two years ago, recently omitted from the one-day team, the ideal candidate to return structure to a shaky team. And we are advised this is a composed and reflective Labuschagne currently: a simplified, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, no longer as extremely focused with minor adjustments. “I feel like I’ve really cut out extras,” he said after his ton. “Not really too technical, just what I should score runs.”

Of course, this is doubted. In all likelihood this is a fresh image that exists only in Labuschagne’s mind: still constantly refining that approach from morning to night, going more back to basics than anyone has ever dared. You want less technical? Marnus will spend months in the training with advisors and replays, exhaustively remoulding himself into the simplest player that has ever existed. This is just the trait of the obsessed, and the characteristic that has long made Labuschagne one of the highly engaging players in the sport.

The Broader Picture

Perhaps before this highly uncertain England-Australia contest, there is even a type of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s endless focus. In England we have a squad for whom technical study, let alone self-analysis, is a forbidden topic. Trust your gut. Focus on the present. Smell the now.

On the opposite side you have a player such as Labuschagne, a individual terminally obsessed with the sport and totally indifferent by who knows about it, who sees cricket even in the gaps in the game, who handles this unusual pursuit with precisely the amount of odd devotion it deserves.

His method paid off. During his focused era – from the moment he strode out to come in for a hurt Steve Smith at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed to see the game on another level. To reach it – through absolute focus – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his stint in club cricket, teammates would find him on the day of a match positioned on a seat in a focused mindset, literally visualising all balls of his batting stint. According to Cricviz, during the first few years of his career a statistically unfathomable catches were missed when he batted. Remarkably Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before anyone had a chance to change it.

Recent Challenges

Perhaps this was why his career began to disintegrate the moment he reached the summit. There were no new heights to imagine, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Additionally – he began doubting his favorite stroke, 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, reckons a attention to shorter formats started to erode confidence in his positioning. Positive development: he’s just been dropped from the 50-over squad.

Surely it matters, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an committed Christian who thinks that this is all predetermined, who thus sees his job as one of accessing this state of flow, no matter how mysterious it may look to the mortal of us.

This mindset, to my mind, has always been the primary contrast between him and the other batsman, a instinctive player