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Labuschagne methodically applies butter on both sides of a slice of plain bread. “That’s essential,” he tells the camera as he lowers the lid of his sandwich grill. “Perfect. Then you get it crisp on both sides.” He checks inside to reveal a perfectly browned of pure toasted goodness, the gooey cheese happily sizzling within. “And that’s the trick of the trade,” he explains. At which point, he does something unexpected and strange.

At this stage, I sense a glaze of ennui is beginning to cover your eyes. The alarm bells of overly fancy prose are going off. You’re probably aware that Labuschagne made 160 runs for his state team this week and is being feverishly talked up for an Australian Test recall before the England-Australia contest.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about his performance. But first – you now grasp with irritation – you’re going to have to sit through three paragraphs of light-hearted musing about toasted sandwiches, plus an additional unnecessary part of self-referential analysis in the second person. You feel resigned.

He turns the sandwich on to a serving plate and walks across the fridge. “Few try this,” he announces, “but I personally prefer the toastie cold. Boom, in the fridge. You allow the cheese to set, head to practice, come back. Perfect. Sandwich is perfect.”

On-Field Matters

Okay, let’s try it like this. Let’s address the sports aspect initially? Quick update for reading until now. And while there may only be six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s century against Tasmania – his third this season in various games – feels significantly impactful.

This is an Australian top order seriously lacking consistency and technique, exposed by the South African team in the World Test Championship final, exposed again in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was left out during that tour, but on one hand you gathered Australia were keen to restore him at the earliest chance. Now he seems to have given them the ideal reason.

Here is a approach the team should follow. Khawaja has just one 100 in his past 44 innings. Konstas looks hardly a Test opener and rather like the attractive performer who might play a Test opener in a Bollywood movie. Other candidates has presented a strong argument. Nathan McSweeney looks out of form. Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like dust or mold. Meanwhile their captain, Pat Cummins, is hurt and suddenly this appears as a surprisingly weak team, missing strength or equilibrium, the kind of effortless self-assurance that has often given Australia a lead before a ball is bowled.

The Batsman’s Revival

Here comes Labuschagne: a world No 1 Test batter as just two years ago, freshly dropped from the one-day team, the ideal candidate to restore order to a shaky team. And we are informed this is a composed and reflective Labuschagne currently: a simplified, no-frills Labuschagne, no longer as extremely focused with technical minutiae. “I believe I have really cut out extras,” he said after his ton. “Not really too technical, just what I need to bat effectively.”

Of course, nobody truly believes this. Probably this is a fresh image that exists just in Labuschagne’s own head: still furiously stripping down that approach from dawn to dusk, going more back to basics than any player has attempted. You want less technical? Marnus will spend months in the training with coaches and video clips, exhaustively remoulding himself into the most basic batsman that has ever played. This is just the nature of the addict, and the quality that has long made Labuschagne one of the most wildly absorbing players in the game.

Wider Context

Maybe before this highly uncertain historic rivalry, there is even a kind of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s constant dedication. For England we have a team for whom any kind of analysis, let alone self-analysis, is a forbidden topic. Go with instinct. Focus on the present. Live in the instant.

In the other corner you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a man completely dedicated with cricket and wonderfully unconcerned by others’ opinions, who sees cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who treats this absurd sport with just the right measure of absurd reverence it demands.

And it worked. During his intense period – from the time he walked out to come in for a hurt Smith at the famous ground in 2019 to through 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 stint in Kent league cricket, fellow players saw him on the day of a match sitting on a park bench in a focused mindset, actually imagining all balls of his time at the crease. Per the analytics firm, during the early stages of his career a statistically unfathomable proportion of catches were spilled from his batting. In some way Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before fielders could respond to change it.

Form Issues

It’s possible this was why his career began to disintegrate the moment he reached the summit. There were no new heights to imagine, just a boundless, uncharted void before his eyes. Furthermore – he lost faith in 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 mentor, D’Costa, reckons a emphasis on limited-overs started to weaken assurance in his positioning. Encouragingly: he’s recently omitted from the one-day team.

Surely it matters, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an evangelical Christian who thinks that this is all predetermined, who thus sees his role as one of accessing this state of flow, however enigmatic and inexplicable it may appear to the rest of us.

This, to my mind, has always been the main point of difference between him and the other batsman, a instinctive player