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Labuschagne carefully spreads butter on the top and bottom of a slice of plain bread. “That’s the secret,” he states as he lowers the lid of his toastie maker. “Boom. Then you get it golden on each side.” He lifts the lid to reveal a toasted delight of delicious perfection, the bubbling cheese happily melting inside. “So this is the secret method,” he explains. At which point, he does something shocking and odd.

Already, you may feel a sense of disinterest is beginning to form across your eyes. The warning signs of sportswriting pretension are going off. You’re probably aware that Labuschagne hit 160 for Queensland this week and is being feverishly talked up for an return to the Test side before the England-Australia contest.

You likely wish to read more about his performance. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to get through a section of light-hearted musing about toasties, plus an further tangential section of overly analytical commentary in the second person. You sigh again.

He turns the sandwich on to a dish and moves toward the fridge. “Not many people do this,” he states, “but I genuinely enjoy the cold toastie. Boom, in the fridge. You get that cheese to harden up, head to practice, come back. Alright. It’s ideal.”

On-Field Matters

Alright, let’s try it like this. How about we cover the match details initially? Small reward for your patience. And while there may still be six weeks until the series opener, Labuschagne’s century against the Tasmanian side – his third this season in all formats – feels importantly timed.

Here’s an Aussie opening batsmen clearly missing performance and method, shown up by South Africa in the World Test Championship final, highlighted further in the Caribbean afterwards. Labuschagne was left out during that series, but on one hand you felt Australia were eager to bring him back at the soonest moment. Now he appears to have given them the ideal reason.

Here is a plan that Australia need to work. Usman Khawaja has one century in his recent 44 batting efforts. Sam Konstas looks less like a first-innings batsman and more like the good-looking star who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood movie. None of the alternatives has shown convincing form. McSweeney looks out of form. Marcus Harris is still oddly present, like unwanted guests. Meanwhile their skipper, Pat Cummins, is hurt and suddenly this feels like a surprisingly weak team, short of authority or balance, the kind of effortless self-assurance that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a game starts.

The Batsman’s Revival

Here comes Labuschagne: a world No 1 Test batter as just two years ago, freshly dropped from the one-day team, the perfect character to return structure to a shaky team. And we are told this is a calmer and more meditative Labuschagne these days: a streamlined, no-frills Labuschagne, less intensely fixated with small details. “I feel like I’ve really cut out extras,” he said after his ton. “Not overthinking, just what I should bat effectively.”

Of course, nobody truly believes this. In all likelihood this is a rebrand that exists only in Labuschagne’s mind: still endlessly adjusting that approach from all day, going further toward simplicity than any player has attempted. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will spend months in the training with coaches and video clips, completely transforming into the simplest player that has ever played. This is simply the trait of the obsessed, and the quality that has long made Labuschagne one of the most wildly absorbing cricketers in the cricket.

Bigger Scene

Maybe before this highly uncertain historic rivalry, there is even a kind of appealing difference to Labuschagne’s endless focus. In England we have a squad for whom detailed examination, let alone self-analysis, is a risky subject. Feel the flavours. Stay in the moment. Smell the now.

For Australia you have a individual like Labuschagne, a man terminally obsessed with the game and totally indifferent by public perception, who sees cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who approaches this quirky game with precisely the amount of absurd reverence it demands.

His method paid off. During his focused era – from the instant he appeared to come in for a hurt Smith at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to until late 2022 – Labuschagne somehow managed to see the game on another level. To tap into it – through pure determination – on a different, unusual, intense plane. During his stint in club cricket, teammates would find him on the game day sitting on a park bench in a trance-like state, actually imagining each delivery of his innings. According to Cricviz, during the first few years of his career a unusually large proportion of catches were missed when he batted. In some way Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before anyone had a chance to change it.

Recent Challenges

It’s possible this was why his career began to disintegrate the point he became number one. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Furthermore – he began doubting his cover drive, got stuck in his crease and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his coach, his coach, believes a attention to shorter formats started to weaken assurance in his alignment. Encouragingly: he’s now excluded from the ODI side.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a man of deep religious faith, an evangelical Christian who holds that this is all predetermined, who thus sees his role as one of reaching this optimal zone, no matter how mysterious it may look to the mortal of us.

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