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Labuschagne evenly coats butter on each surface of a slice of soft bread. “That’s essential,” he explains as he closes the lid of his toastie maker. “Boom. Then you get it toasted on the outside.” He lifts the lid to reveal a golden square of ideal crispiness, the melted cheese happily bubbling away. “And that’s the key technique,” he declares. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

By now, you may feel a glaze of ennui is beginning to cover your eyes. The alarm bells of elaborate writing are flashing wildly. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne hit 160 for Queensland this week and is being widely discussed for an Australian Test recall before the Ashes series.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about his performance. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to endure several lines of light-hearted musing about grilled cheese, plus an further tangential section of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the second person. You sigh again.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a plate and heads over the fridge. “It’s uncommon,” he states, “but I genuinely enjoy the toastie cold. There, in the fridge. You allow the cheese to set, go bat, come back. Perfect. Sandwich is perfect.”

On-Field Matters

Okay, let’s try it like this. Shall we get the cricket bit out of the way first? Quick update for making it this far. And while there may be just six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s hundred against the Tasmanian side – his third of the summer in all formats – feels importantly timed.

Here’s an Australian top order clearly missing form and structure, shown up by the Proteas in the Test championship decider, highlighted further in the West Indies after that. Labuschagne was omitted during that trip, but on a certain level you felt Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the first opportunity. Now he appears to have given them the ideal reason.

This represents a approach the team should follow. Usman Khawaja has one century in his last 44 knocks. Konstas looks not quite a first-innings batsman and rather like the attractive performer who might portray a cricketer in a Bollywood movie. Other candidates has made a cogent case. McSweeney looks finished. Marcus Harris is still oddly present, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their leader, Pat Cummins, is hurt and suddenly this seems like a weirdly lightweight side, lacking authority or balance, the kind of built-in belief that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a match begins.

Marnus’s Comeback

Enter Marnus: a world No 1 Test batter as just two years ago, recently omitted from the ODI side, the right person to restore order to a shaky team. And we are informed this is a composed and reflective Labuschagne now: a simplified, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, no longer as intensely fixated with small details. “It seems I’ve really simplified things,” he said after his century. “Not overthinking, just what I must score runs.”

Naturally, few accept this. Probably this is a rebrand that exists only in Labuschagne’s own head: still constantly refining that approach from all day, going deeper into fundamentals than anyone has ever dared. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will spend months in the training with coaches and video clips, exhaustively remoulding himself into the most basic batsman that has ever been seen. That’s the nature of the addict, and the quality that has long made Labuschagne one of the most wildly absorbing sportsmen in the cricket.

Bigger Scene

Perhaps before this inscrutably unpredictable Ashes series, there is even a type of interesting contrast to Labuschagne’s constant dedication. For England we have a team for whom detailed examination, let alone self-analysis, is a forbidden topic. Trust your gut. Focus on the present. Live in the instant.

In the other corner you have a player such as Labuschagne, a player terminally obsessed 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.

This approach succeeded. During his shamanic phase – from the moment he strode out to come in for a hurt the senior batsman at Lord’s in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game with greater insight. To tap into it – through pure determination – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his days playing English county cricket, fellow players saw him on the day of a match positioned on a seat in a trance-like state, literally visualising all balls of his time at the crease. Per the analytics firm, during the first few years of his career a statistically unfathomable proportion of catches were missed when he batted. Remarkably Labuschagne had predicted events before fielders could respond to affect it.

Form Issues

It’s possible this was why his career began to disintegrate the moment he reached the summit. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Additionally – he began doubting his favorite stroke, got unable to move forward and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s part of the same issue. Meanwhile his coach, his coach, reckons a focus on white-ball cricket started to weaken assurance in his alignment. Encouragingly: he’s now excluded from the one-day team.

Certainly it’s relevant, 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 achieving this peak performance, despite being puzzling it may look to the ordinary people.

This, to my mind, has long been the main point of difference between him and Smith, a inherently talented player