The Three Lions Take Note: Utterly Fixated Labuschagne Has Gone To the Fundamentals

Marnus evenly coats butter on the top and bottom of a slice of plain bread. “That’s the key,” he explains as he brings down the lid of his toastie maker. “There you go. Then you get it golden on each side.” He lifts the lid to reveal a golden square of ideal crispiness, the gooey cheese happily melting inside. “Here’s the secret method,” he declares. At which point, he does something unexpected and strange.

At this stage, I sense a sense of disinterest is beginning to form across your eyes. The warning signs of elaborate writing are blinking intensely. You’re probably aware that Labuschagne hit 160 for Queensland this week and is being feverishly talked up for an national team comeback before the Ashes.

You likely wish to read more about his performance. But first – you now realise with an anguished sigh – you’re going to have to endure a section of playful digression about grilled cheese, plus an additional unnecessary part of overly analytical commentary in the “you” perspective. You groan once more.

Labuschagne flips the sandwich on to a serving plate and moves toward the fridge. “Few try this,” he states, “but I personally prefer the grilled sandwich chilled. Done, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, go bat, come back. Perfect. Sandwich is perfect.”

On-Field Matters

Alright, let’s try it like this. Shall we get the cricket bit out of the way first? Quick update for your patience. And while there may still be six weeks until the initial match, Labuschagne’s hundred against the Tasmanian side – his third in recent months in various games – feels significantly impactful.

We have an Aussie opening batsmen seriously lacking form and structure, revealed against South Africa in the World Test Championship final, exposed again in the West Indies after that. Labuschagne was omitted during that tour, but on some level you felt Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the earliest chance. Now he seems to have given them the perfect excuse.

And this is a strategy Australia must implement. The opener has a single hundred in his last 44 knocks. Konstas looks hardly a Test opener and rather like the handsome actor who might play a Test opener in a Bollywood epic. Other candidates has shown convincing form. Nathan McSweeney looks out of form. Harris is still oddly present, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their leader, Pat Cummins, is unfit and suddenly this feels like a surprisingly weak team, short of command or stability, the kind of natural confidence that has often put Australia 2-0 up before a match begins.

The Batsman’s Revival

Step forward Marnus: a leading Test player as just two years ago, just left out from the 50-over squad, the right person to return structure to a fragile lineup. And we are told this is a composed and reflective Labuschagne now: a pared-down, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, no longer as extremely focused with small details. “I believe I have really simplified things,” he said after his hundred. “Not really too technical, just what I must bat effectively.”

Naturally, few accept this. In all likelihood this is a new approach that exists only in Labuschagne’s personal view: still endlessly adjusting that technique from morning to night, going more back to basics than any player has attempted. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will take time in the nets with advisors and replays, thoroughly reshaping his game into the most basic batsman that has ever played. This is simply the quality of the focused, and the quality that has always made Labuschagne one of the highly engaging sportsmen in the game.

Bigger Scene

Perhaps before this very open Ashes series, there is even a sort of interesting contrast to Labuschagne’s endless focus. On England’s side we have a team for whom detailed examination, especially personal critique, is a kind of dangerous taboo. Trust your gut. Focus on the present. Embrace the current.

In the other corner you have a individual like Labuschagne, a individual utterly absorbed with cricket and magnificently unbothered by who knows about it, who observes cricket even in the gaps in the game, who approaches this quirky game with exactly the level of odd devotion it deserves.

And it worked. During his focused era – from the instant he appeared to come in for a hurt Steve Smith at Lord’s Cricket Ground in 2019 to around the end of 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game on another level. To access it – through absolute focus – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his stint in club cricket, teammates would find him on the game day positioned on a seat in a trance-like state, literally visualising each delivery of his innings. Per Cricviz, during the initial period of his career a unusually large number of chances were dropped off his bat. Remarkably Labuschagne had intuited what would happen before fielders could respond to affect it.

Current Struggles

It’s possible this was why his career began to disintegrate the time he achieved top ranking. There were no worlds left to visualise, just a unknown territory before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he stopped trusting his signature shot, got unable to move forward and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his mentor, D’Costa, thinks a focus on white-ball cricket started to erode confidence in his positioning. Encouragingly: he’s just been dropped from the ODI side.

Surely it matters, too, that Labuschagne is a devoutly religious individual, an evangelical Christian who thinks that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his role as one of achieving this peak performance, no matter how mysterious it may seem to the mortal of us.

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