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Marnus carefully spreads butter on each surface of a slice of soft bread. “That’s the secret,” he explains as he brings down the lid of his toastie maker. “There you go. Then you get it toasted on both sides.” He lifts the lid to reveal a toasted delight of pure toasted goodness, the gooey cheese happily bubbling away. “And that’s the trick of the trade,” he explains. At which point, he does something horrific and unspeakable.

Already, you may feel a glaze of ennui is beginning to cover your eyes. The warning signs of overly fancy prose are flashing wildly. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne hit 160 for Queensland this week and is being widely discussed for an national team comeback before the England-Australia contest.

You probably want to read more about cricket matters. But first – you now understand with frustration – you’re going to have to endure several lines of wobbling whimsy about grilled cheese, plus an additional unnecessary part of self-referential analysis in the second person. You groan once more.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a plate and walks across the fridge. “Few try this,” he remarks, “but I genuinely enjoy the grilled sandwich chilled. Boom, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, go bat, come back. Perfect. Toastie’s ready to go.”

On-Field Matters

Look, let’s try it like this. Shall we get the cricket bit initially? Small reward for making it this far. And while there may still be six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s hundred against the Tasmanian side – his third of the summer in all formats – feels quietly decisive.

We have an Aussie opening batsmen seriously lacking form and structure, shown up by the Proteas in the WTC final, shown up once more in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was omitted during that trip, but on some level you felt Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the first opportunity. Now he looks to have given them the perfect excuse.

This represents a plan that Australia need to work. Khawaja has a single hundred in his last 44 knocks. The young batsman looks hardly a Test match opener and closer to the attractive performer who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood movie. None of the alternatives has presented a strong argument. Nathan McSweeney looks out of form. Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like unwanted guests. Meanwhile their captain, Pat Cummins, is unfit and suddenly this seems like a surprisingly weak team, missing authority or balance, the kind of effortless self-assurance that has often given Australia a lead before a game starts.

Marnus’s Comeback

Here comes Labuschagne: a leading Test player as in the recent past, recently omitted from the ODI side, the perfect character to restore order to a shaky team. And we are informed this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne these days: a simplified, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, not as intensely fixated with minor adjustments. “It seems I’ve really simplified things,” he said after his ton. “Not overthinking, just what I need to make runs.”

Naturally, this is doubted. Most likely this is a new approach that exists just in Labuschagne’s personal view: still endlessly adjusting that method from dawn to dusk, going further toward simplicity than any player has attempted. Like basic approach? Marnus will take time in the nets with trainers and footage, thoroughly reshaping his game into the most basic batsman that has ever played. This is simply the quality of the focused, and the trait that has always made Labuschagne one of the highly engaging sportsmen in the game.

Wider Context

Maybe before this very open historic rivalry, there is even a sort of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s constant dedication. On England’s side we have a team for whom detailed examination, let alone self-analysis, is a kind of dangerous taboo. Go with instinct. Be where the ball is. Smell the now.

For Australia you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a individual utterly absorbed with the sport and totally indifferent by who knows about it, who sees cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who approaches this quirky game with exactly the level of absurd reverence it requires.

This approach succeeded. During his focused era – from the time he walked out to come in for a hurt the senior batsman at the famous ground in 2019 to through 2022 – Labuschagne was able to see the game with greater insight. To access it – through absolute focus – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his stint in club cricket, colleagues noticed him on the morning of a game positioned on a seat in a trance-like state, literally visualising all balls of his innings. According to the analytics firm, during the initial period of his career a statistically unfathomable number of chances were spilled from his batting. Remarkably Labuschagne had anticipated outcomes before fielders could respond to affect it.

Form Issues

Perhaps this was why his performance dipped the moment he reached the summit. There were no new heights to imagine, just a boundless, uncharted void before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he lost faith in his cover drive, got stuck in his crease and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s connected really. Meanwhile his coach, his coach, reckons a emphasis on limited-overs started to erode confidence in his technique. Encouragingly: he’s just been dropped from the one-day team.

Surely it matters, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an committed Christian who thinks that this is all preordained, who thus sees his job as one of accessing this state of flow, no matter how mysterious it may look to the rest of us.

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