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The Australian batsman carefully spreads butter on the top and bottom of a slice of plain bread. “That’s the secret,” he states as he closes the lid of his sandwich grill. “Boom. Then you get it toasted on both sides.” He checks inside to reveal a golden square of pure toasted goodness, the gooey cheese happily bubbling away. “And that’s the trick of the trade,” he announces. At which point, he does something unexpected and strange.

Already, you may feel a glaze of ennui is beginning to cover your eyes. The alarm bells of overly fancy prose are blinking intensely. You’re probably aware that Labuschagne made 160 runs for Queensland Bulls this week and is being widely discussed for an national team comeback before the Ashes.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about that. But first – you now understand with frustration – you’re going to have to get through a section of light-hearted musing about toasted sandwiches, plus an extra unwanted bonus paragraph of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the “you” perspective. You feel resigned.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a serving plate and moves toward the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he announces, “but I genuinely enjoy the grilled sandwich chilled. There, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, head to practice, come back. Alright. Sandwich is perfect.”

On-Field Matters

Alright, here’s the main point. Shall we get the cricket bit out of the way first? Small reward for reading until now. And while there may still be six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s 100 runs against the Tasmanian side – his third in recent months in all formats – feels importantly timed.

We have an Aussie opening batsmen badly short of form and structure, revealed against the South African team in the World Test Championship final, exposed again in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was dropped during that tour, but on some level you sensed Australia were eager to bring him back at the soonest moment. Now he looks to have given them the perfect excuse.

Here is a approach the team should follow. The opener has just one 100 in his past 44 innings. Konstas looks hardly a first-innings batsman and more like the good-looking star who might portray a cricketer in a Bollywood movie. None of the alternatives has presented a strong argument. McSweeney looks finished. Another option is still oddly present, like unwanted guests. Meanwhile their leader, Cummins, is injured and suddenly this seems like a surprisingly weak team, missing strength or equilibrium, the kind of effortless self-assurance that has often given Australia a lead before a match begins.

Marnus’s Comeback

Enter Marnus: a world No 1 Test batter as recently as 2023, recently omitted from the ODI side, the ideal candidate to restore order to a shaky team. And we are informed this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne currently: a simplified, back-to-basics Labuschagne, not as maniacally obsessed with technical minutiae. “I feel like I’ve really simplified things,” he said after his hundred. “Not overthinking, just what I should make runs.”

Naturally, this is doubted. In all likelihood this is a new approach that exists entirely in Labuschagne’s own head: still furiously stripping down that method from morning to night, going deeper into fundamentals than any player has attempted. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will take time in the practice sessions with trainers and footage, exhaustively remoulding himself into the simplest player that has ever been seen. That’s the trait of the obsessed, and the quality that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the most wildly absorbing players in the sport.

Wider Context

Perhaps before this very open Ashes series, there is even a sort of interesting contrast to Labuschagne’s endless focus. In England we have a squad for whom technical study, not to mention self-review, is a risky subject. Go with instinct. Be where the ball is. Live in the instant.

In the other corner you have a individual like Labuschagne, a player utterly absorbed with the sport and magnificently unbothered by public perception, who observes cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who approaches this quirky game with just the right measure of quirky respect it demands.

This approach succeeded. During his focused era – from the time he walked out to come in for a hurt Steve Smith at Lord’s in 2019 to through 2022 – Labuschagne was able to see the game on another level. To access it – through pure determination – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his days playing club cricket, fellow players saw him on the morning of a game positioned on a seat in a meditative condition, actually imagining every single ball of his batting stint. According to the analytics firm, during the initial period of his career a unusually large catches were dropped off his bat. Remarkably Labuschagne had predicted events before others could react to change it.

Current Struggles

Maybe this was why his performance dipped the time he achieved top ranking. There were no further goals to picture, just a boundless, uncharted void before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he lost faith in his signature shot, got trapped on the crease and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s connected really. Meanwhile his trainer, Neil D’Costa, believes a emphasis on limited-overs started to erode confidence in his technique. Positive development: he’s now excluded from the ODI side.

Certainly it’s relevant, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an religious believer who believes that this is all preordained, who thus sees his task as one of accessing this state of flow, however enigmatic and inexplicable it may look to the mortal of us.

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