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Marnus methodically applies butter on the top and bottom of a slice of plain bread. “That’s the key,” he explains as he closes the lid of his toastie maker. “There you go. Then you get it golden on both sides.” He lifts the lid to reveal a golden square of ideal crispiness, the bubbling cheese happily melting inside. “And that’s the trick of the trade,” he explains. 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 blinking intensely. You’re likely conscious that Labuschagne hit 160 for his state team this week and is being widely discussed for an return to the Test side before the England-Australia contest.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about cricket matters. But first – you now grasp with irritation – you’re going to have to endure three paragraphs of light-hearted musing about toasted sandwiches, plus an additional unnecessary part of tiresome meta‑deconstruction in the second person. You feel resigned.

He turns the sandwich on to a serving plate and walks across the fridge. “Few try this,” he announces, “but I actually like the grilled sandwich chilled. Done, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, go for a hit, come back. Perfect. Sandwich is perfect.”

The Cricket Context

Okay, let’s try it like this. How about we cover the sports aspect out of the way first? Quick update for making it this far. And while there may still be six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s hundred against Tasmania – his third of the summer in all cricket – feels importantly timed.

This is an Australian top order badly short of form and structure, shown up by the South African team in the Test championship decider, exposed again in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was dropped during that tour, but on some level you felt Australia were keen to restore him at the earliest chance. Now he seems to have given them the right opportunity.

Here is a plan that Australia need to work. The opener has just one 100 in his last 44 knocks. Konstas looks hardly a Test match opener and rather like the good-looking star who might play a Test opener in a Indian film. Other candidates has presented a strong argument. Nathan McSweeney looks finished. Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their captain, Pat Cummins, is injured and suddenly this seems like a surprisingly weak team, short of authority or balance, the kind of natural confidence that has often given Australia a lead before a ball is bowled.

The Batsman’s Revival

Step forward Marnus: a top-ranked Test batsman as just two years ago, just left out from the 50-over squad, the ideal candidate to bring stability to a shaky team. And we are informed this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne now: a pared-down, back-to-basics Labuschagne, less extremely focused with small details. “I believe I have really simplified things,” he said after his century. “Not overthinking, just what I should score runs.”

Of course, nobody truly believes this. Most likely this is a new approach that exists just in Labuschagne’s own head: still furiously stripping down that method from morning to night, going more back to basics than anyone else would try. You want less technical? Marnus will spend months in the nets with coaches and video clips, thoroughly reshaping his game into the simplest player that has ever played. This is simply the trait of the obsessed, and the trait that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the highly engaging sportsmen in the game.

Bigger Scene

Perhaps before this highly uncertain Ashes series, there is even a sort of pleasing dissonance to Labuschagne’s endless focus. For England we have a team for whom detailed examination, not to mention self-review, is a forbidden topic. Feel the flavours. Focus on the present. Live in the instant.

On the opposite side you have a player such as Labuschagne, a individual utterly absorbed with the game and totally indifferent by others’ opinions, who finds cricket even in the moments outside play, who treats this absurd sport with precisely the amount of quirky respect it requires.

And it worked. During his focused era – from the moment he strode out to replace a concussed Smith at the famous ground in 2019 to through 2022 – Labuschagne was able to see the game more deeply. To access it – through absolute focus – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his time with Kent league cricket, teammates would find him on the game day sitting on a park bench in a trance-like state, mentally rehearsing all balls of his innings. Per cricket statisticians, during the early stages of his career a surprisingly high catches were spilled from his batting. Somehow Labuschagne had predicted events before fielders could respond to change it.

Recent Challenges

It’s possible this was why his form started to decline the point he became number one. There were no new heights to imagine, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Furthermore – he lost faith in his favorite stroke, got unable to move forward and seemed to misjudge his positioning. But it’s part of the same issue. Meanwhile his trainer, D’Costa, thinks a focus on white-ball cricket 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 devoutly religious individual, an religious believer who holds that this is all predetermined, who thus sees his task as one of reaching this optimal zone, no matter how mysterious it may look to the mortal of us.

This, to my mind, has consistently been the primary contrast between him and Steve Smith, a instinctive player