The Three Lions Be Warned: Terminally Obsessed Labuschagne Goes To the Fundamentals

Marnus evenly coats butter on each surface of a slice of plain bread. “That’s essential,” he tells the camera as he closes the lid of his sandwich grill. “Boom. Then you get it toasted on both sides.” He lifts the lid to reveal a golden square of pure toasted goodness, the bubbling cheese happily sizzling within. “So this is the secret method,” he explains. At which point, he does something horrific and unspeakable.

By now, you may feel a sense of disinterest is beginning to form across your eyes. The alarm bells of overly fancy prose are going off. You’re no doubt informed that Labuschagne made 160 runs for Queensland this week and is being feverishly talked up for an return to the Test side before the Ashes series.

No doubt you’d prefer to read more about his performance. But first – you now grasp with irritation – you’re going to have to sit through three paragraphs of playful digression about toasted sandwiches, plus an extra unwanted bonus paragraph of overly analytical commentary in the direct address. You groan once more.

He turns the sandwich on to a dish and moves toward the fridge. “It’s uncommon,” he announces, “but I personally prefer the grilled sandwich chilled. There, in the fridge. You let the cheese firm up, head to practice, come back. Perfect. Sandwich is perfect.”

Back to Cricket

Look, let’s try it like this. Let’s address the match details initially? Small reward for making it this far. And while there may still be six weeks until the first Test, Labuschagne’s 100 runs against the Tasmanian side – his third of the summer in various games – feels significantly impactful.

We have an Aussie opening batsmen badly short of form and structure, exposed by the South African team in the WTC final, shown up once more in the West Indies after that. Labuschagne was omitted during that trip, but on some level you felt Australia were desperate to rehabilitate him at the soonest moment. Now he appears to have given them the perfect excuse.

Here is a approach the team should follow. Khawaja has just one 100 in his last 44 knocks. Konstas looks hardly a first-innings batsman and more like the handsome actor who might act as a batsman in a Bollywood movie. Other candidates has shown convincing form. McSweeney looks out of form. Harris is still inexplicably hanging around, like moths or damp. Meanwhile their captain, Cummins, is hurt and suddenly this appears as a surprisingly weak team, lacking authority or balance, the kind of effortless self-assurance that has often given Australia a lead before a game starts.

Marnus’s Comeback

Step forward Marnus: a top-ranked Test batsman as recently as 2023, recently omitted from the 50-over squad, the perfect character to bring stability to a fragile lineup. And we are advised this is a more relaxed and thoughtful Labuschagne these days: a simplified, fundamental-focused Labuschagne, less maniacally obsessed with technical minutiae. “I believe I have really cut out extras,” he said after his century. “Not overthinking, just what I must score runs.”

Clearly, few accept this. Most likely this is a fresh image that exists just in Labuschagne’s own head: still constantly refining that approach from dawn to dusk, going further toward simplicity than anyone has ever dared. Prefer simplicity? Marnus will devote weeks in the practice sessions with trainers and footage, thoroughly reshaping his game into the simplest player that has ever existed. This is simply the trait of the obsessed, and the trait that has consistently made Labuschagne one of the deeply fascinating players in the cricket.

The Broader Picture

It could be before this very open England-Australia contest, there is even a sort of interesting contrast to Labuschagne’s constant dedication. In England we have a side for whom technical study, let alone self-analysis, is a risky subject. Feel the flavours. Stay in the moment. Embrace the current.

In the other corner you have a batsman like Labuschagne, a player terminally obsessed with the game and wonderfully unconcerned by others’ opinions, who observes cricket even in the spaces between the cricket, who treats this absurd sport with just the right measure of quirky respect it deserves.

His method paid off. During his focused era – from the instant he appeared to come in for a hurt the senior batsman at the famous ground in 2019 to until late 2022 – Labuschagne found a way to see the game with greater insight. To tap into it – through pure determination – on a higher, weirder, more frenzied level. During his time with club cricket, teammates would find him on the morning of a game positioned on a seat in a meditative condition, actually imagining all balls of his time at the crease. As per the analytics firm, during the first few years of his career a statistically unfathomable proportion of catches were missed when he batted. In some way Labuschagne had anticipated outcomes before anyone had a chance to influence it.

Form Issues

It’s possible this was why his performance dipped the point he became number one. There were no further goals to picture, just a empty space before his eyes. Also – to be fair – he stopped trusting his signature shot, got trapped on the crease and seemed to forget where his off-stump was. But it’s all the same thing. Meanwhile his mentor, Neil D’Costa, reckons a focus on white-ball cricket started to erode confidence in his alignment. Encouragingly: he’s just been dropped from the 50-over squad.

No doubt it’s important, too, that Labuschagne is a strongly faithful person, an evangelical Christian who holds that this is all basically written out in advance, who thus sees his job as one of accessing this state of flow, however enigmatic and inexplicable it may seem to the mortal of us.

This, to my mind, has long been the main point of difference between him and Steve Smith, a inherently talented player