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Marnus methodically applies butter on the top and bottom of a slice of soft bread. “That’s the secret,” he states as he brings down the lid of his grilled cheese press. “Boom. Then you get it golden on the outside.” He lifts the lid to reveal a toasted delight of pure toasted goodness, the melted cheese happily bubbling away. “So this is the trick of the trade,” he explains. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

Already, you may feel a sense of disinterest is beginning to appear in your eyes. The red lights of overly fancy prose are blinking intensely. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne hit 160 for Queensland Bulls this week and is being feverishly talked up for an national team comeback before the Ashes series.

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 get through three paragraphs of light-hearted musing about grilled cheese, plus an further tangential section of overly analytical commentary in the direct address. You groan once more.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a serving plate and heads over the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he states, “but I actually like the cold toastie. There, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, go for a hit, come back. Boom. Toastie’s ready to go.”

On-Field Matters

Okay, let’s try it like this. Shall we get the match details out of the way first? Quick update for your patience. And while there may only be six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s century against the Tasmanian side – his third in recent months in all formats – feels quietly decisive.

We have an Australia top three clearly missing performance and method, exposed by the Proteas in the WTC final, exposed again in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was left out during that series, but on a certain level you gathered Australia were eager to bring him back at the soonest moment. Now he appears to have given them the right opportunity.

And this is a strategy Australia must implement. Khawaja has a single hundred in his recent 44 batting efforts. The young batsman looks not quite a Test opener and more like the attractive performer who might play a Test opener in a Bollywood epic. No other options has made a cogent case. McSweeney looks cooked. Marcus Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their leader, the pace bowler, is hurt and suddenly this feels like a weirdly lightweight side, short of command or stability, the kind of natural confidence that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a ball is bowled.

The Batsman’s Revival

Here comes Labuschagne: a top-ranked Test batsman as recently as 2023, just left out from the one-day team, the perfect character to bring stability to a shaky team. And we are told this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne now: a streamlined, back-to-basics Labuschagne, less extremely focused with small details. “I believe I have really stripped it back,” he said after his century. “Not really too technical, just what I need to make runs.”

Of course, nobody truly believes this. In all likelihood this is a fresh image that exists entirely in Labuschagne’s own head: still constantly refining that technique from dawn to dusk, going further toward simplicity than any player has attempted. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will spend months in the training with coaches and video clips, completely transforming into the simplest player that has ever been seen. This is just the quality of the focused, and the quality that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating sportsmen in the sport.

Wider Context

Perhaps before this highly uncertain Ashes series, there is even a type of interesting contrast to Labuschagne’s unquenchable obsession. On England’s side we have a squad for whom detailed examination, 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 individual like Labuschagne, a player terminally obsessed with the game and magnificently unbothered by others’ opinions, who observes cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who treats this absurd sport with precisely the amount of absurd reverence it demands.

And it worked. During his focused era – from the instant he appeared to replace a concussed Steve Smith at the famous ground in 2019 to until late 2022 – Labuschagne was able to see the game more deeply. To reach it – through pure determination – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his stint in English county cricket, fellow players saw him on the morning of a game sitting on a park bench in a focused mindset, mentally rehearsing all balls of his batting stint. As per the analytics firm, during the early stages of his career a statistically unfathomable proportion of catches were missed when he batted. Remarkably Labuschagne had predicted events before fielders could respond to influence it.

Current Struggles

Maybe this was why his performance dipped the point he became number one. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Additionally – he began doubting 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, believes a focus on white-ball cricket started to erode confidence in his alignment. Good news: he’s just been dropped from the 50-over squad.

Certainly it’s relevant, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an committed Christian who holds that this is all predetermined, who thus sees his job as one of achieving this peak performance, despite being puzzling it may look to the mortal of us.

This mindset, to my mind, has long been the key distinction between him and Steve Smith, a instinctive player