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Marnus evenly coats butter on the top and bottom of a slice of plain bread. “That’s the secret,” he explains as he lowers the lid of his grilled cheese press. “Boom. Then you get it toasted on each side.” He lifts the lid to reveal a perfectly browned of delicious perfection, the bubbling cheese happily sizzling within. “And that’s the key technique,” he explains. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

By now, I sense a layer of boredom is beginning to cover your eyes. The red lights of overly fancy prose are flashing wildly. You’re likely conscious that Labuschagne made 160 runs for Queensland Bulls this week and is being widely discussed for an Australian Test recall before the Ashes.

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 sit through several lines of playful digression about toasted sandwiches, plus an further tangential section of self-referential analysis in the second person. You sigh again.

Marnus transfers the sandwich on to a plate and walks across the fridge. “It’s uncommon,” he remarks, “but I actually like the toastie cold. There, in the fridge. You allow the cheese to set, head to practice, come back. Perfect. It’s ideal.”

The Cricket Context

Look, let’s try it like this. Let’s address the cricket bit out of the way first? Small reward for your patience. And while there may still be six weeks until the initial match, Labuschagne’s 100 runs against the Tasmanian side – his third in recent months in all formats – feels quietly decisive.

Here’s an Aussie opening batsmen badly short of form and structure, revealed against South Africa in the WTC final, shown up once more in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was omitted during that trip, but on one hand you sensed Australia were eager to bring him back at the first opportunity. Now he seems to have given them the perfect excuse.

And this is a plan that Australia need to work. The opener has one century in his past 44 innings. The young batsman looks less like a Test opener and rather like the attractive performer who might play a Test opener in a Indian film. No other options has presented a strong argument. McSweeney looks cooked. Marcus Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like unwanted guests. Meanwhile their captain, Pat Cummins, is injured and suddenly this seems like a unusually thin squad, short of command or stability, the kind of natural confidence that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a game starts.

Marnus’s Comeback

Enter Marnus: a top-ranked Test batsman as recently as 2023, recently omitted from the ODI side, the ideal candidate to bring stability to a shaky team. And we are informed this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne currently: a simplified, back-to-basics Labuschagne, not as extremely focused with minor adjustments. “I feel like I’ve really stripped it back,” he said after his ton. “Not really too technical, just what I should make runs.”

Naturally, this is doubted. In all likelihood this is a rebrand that exists entirely in Labuschagne’s mind: still furiously stripping down that approach from morning to night, going more back to basics than anyone has ever dared. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will devote weeks in the nets with trainers and footage, thoroughly reshaping his game into the simplest player that has ever existed. This is simply the nature of the addict, and the trait that has always made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating players in the game.

Wider Context

Maybe before this very open Ashes series, there is even a sort of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. In England we have a side for whom technical study, not to mention self-review, is a forbidden topic. Trust your gut. Stay in the moment. Live in the instant.

On the opposite side you have a player such as Labuschagne, a man utterly absorbed with cricket and magnificently unbothered by others’ opinions, who finds cricket even in the gaps in the game, who approaches this quirky game with precisely the amount of quirky respect it demands.

This approach succeeded. During his intense period – from the time he walked out to come in for a hurt the senior batsman at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed to see the game with greater insight. To tap into it – through pure determination – on a elevated, strange, passionate tier. During his stint in English county cricket, fellow players saw him on the game day positioned on a seat in a focused mindset, mentally rehearsing each delivery of his time at the crease. Per the analytics firm, during the early stages of his career a surprisingly high number of chances were missed when he batted. Remarkably Labuschagne had anticipated outcomes before others could react to affect it.

Form Issues

Maybe this was why his career began to disintegrate the time he achieved top ranking. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Additionally – he stopped trusting his cover drive, got trapped on the crease and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his mentor, his coach, reckons a focus on white-ball cricket started to erode confidence in his positioning. Encouragingly: he’s now excluded from the 50-over squad.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a strongly faithful person, an committed Christian who thinks that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his role as one of reaching this optimal zone, however enigmatic and inexplicable it may appear to the rest of us.

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