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Marnus evenly coats butter on each surface of a slice of white bread. “That’s the secret,” he states as he brings down the lid of his toastie maker. “Perfect. Then you get it crisp on the outside.” He opens the grill to reveal a golden square of ideal crispiness, the bubbling cheese happily sizzling within. “And that’s the key technique,” he declares. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

At this stage, I sense a glaze of ennui is beginning to appear in your eyes. The warning signs of elaborate writing are blinking intensely. You’re likely conscious that Labuschagne made 160 runs for Queensland this week and is being eagerly promoted for an national team comeback before the Ashes.

You likely wish to read more about that. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to endure three paragraphs of light-hearted musing about grilled cheese, plus an extra unwanted bonus paragraph of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the direct address. You sigh again.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a plate and heads over the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he states, “but I personally prefer the toastie cold. There, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, head to practice, come back. Alright. It’s ideal.”

The Cricket Context

Look, let’s try it like this. Let’s address the sports aspect to begin with? Small reward for making it this far. And while there may only be six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s 100 runs against Tasmania – his third of the summer in all formats – feels quietly decisive.

Here’s an Aussie opening batsmen clearly missing form and structure, shown up by the Proteas in the World Test Championship final, shown up once more in the following Caribbean tour. Labuschagne was left out during that series, but on one hand you gathered Australia were eager to bring him back at the soonest moment. Now he looks to have given them the right opportunity.

This represents a approach the team should follow. The opener has just one 100 in his recent 44 batting efforts. Sam Konstas looks hardly a first-innings batsman and more like the handsome actor who might play a Test opener in a Bollywood movie. None of the alternatives has made a cogent case. Nathan McSweeney looks finished. Harris is still oddly present, like unwanted guests. Meanwhile their leader, Pat Cummins, is injured and suddenly this appears as a unusually thin squad, missing command or stability, the kind of natural confidence that has often helped Australia dominate before a game starts.

Marnus’s Comeback

Here comes Labuschagne: a leading Test player as in the recent past, just left out from the one-day team, the perfect character to return structure to a brittle empire. And we are told this is a composed and reflective Labuschagne now: a streamlined, no-frills Labuschagne, less maniacally obsessed with small details. “I feel like I’ve really simplified things,” he said after his century. “Not overthinking, just what I should make runs.”

Of course, nobody truly believes this. Most likely this is a fresh image that exists entirely in Labuschagne’s personal view: still furiously stripping down that method from morning to night, going further toward simplicity than any player has attempted. Like basic approach? Marnus will take time in the nets with trainers and footage, exhaustively remoulding himself into the most basic batsman that has ever existed. This is simply the trait of the obsessed, and the characteristic that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the highly engaging cricketers in the cricket.

The Broader Picture

It could be before this highly uncertain historic rivalry, there is even a type of interesting contrast to Labuschagne’s constant dedication. In England we have a team for whom detailed examination, let alone self-analysis, is a risky subject. Feel the flavours. Focus on the present. Embrace the current.

For Australia you have a player such as Labuschagne, a man completely dedicated with cricket and totally indifferent by others’ opinions, who observes cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who treats this absurd sport with exactly the level of absurd reverence it demands.

This approach succeeded. During his intense period – from the instant he appeared to come in for a hurt Steve Smith at the famous ground in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed to see the game more deeply. To tap into it – through pure determination – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his stint in Kent league cricket, teammates would find him on the day of a match resting on a bench in a trance-like state, actually imagining all balls of his innings. As per cricket statisticians, during the first few years of his career a surprisingly high catches were spilled from his batting. Remarkably Labuschagne had anticipated outcomes before anyone had a chance to change it.

Current Struggles

It’s possible this was why his form started to decline 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 stopped trusting his cover drive, got trapped on the crease and seemed to lose awareness of his stumps. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his mentor, his coach, thinks a focus on white-ball cricket started to weaken assurance in his alignment. Encouragingly: he’s just been dropped from the one-day team.

Certainly it’s relevant, too, that Labuschagne is a strongly faithful person, an committed Christian who believes that this is all preordained, who thus sees his task as one of achieving this peak performance, no matter how mysterious it may look to the rest of us.

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