INTERVIEW
Follow UsIn his six-year-long Test career, Marnus Labuschagne has played 51 games, of which 14 have been in The Ashes and one in the World Test Championship (WTC) final. Yet in a day's time in Adelaide, the 30-year-old will be bracing to play the most important Test of his career yet.
Australia might be the number one ranked Test side in the world but the Kangaroos are in a bit of a batting crisis on the back of the team’s 295-run defeat in Perth, their heaviest ever against India.
And at the forefront of the crisis is Labuschagne, who, of late, has found it impossible to buy a run.
Since the start of the West Indies series on January 17, 2024, Labuschagne has batted 10 times in Tests. Unfathomably enough, he’s been dismissed for 10 or under on eight occasions, with his average during this period reading 13.66.
The right-hander’s form had been a concern well before the India series began, with his tendency to poke at balls outside off-stump coming under the scanner. Prior to the Perth Test, Labuschagne had averaged 27.88 across his previous 14 Tests where the fourth/fifth stump ball proved to be his Achilles heel.
An encouraging season for Glamorgan at the 2024 County Championship - 468 runs @ 58.5 - instilled hope in many that the Queenslander would bounce back in the series opener against India - at the Optus Stadium no less, where he averaged 115 - but two extremely concerning showings in as many innings in the first Test have put the right-hander’s spot in the Test side in jeopardy.
How has this come to this stage, and what’s actually gone wrong with Labuschagne?
Former Australia opener and former New South Wales head coach Phil Jaques believes the right-hander might now be in a very unhealthy state of mind where he’s trying ‘too hard’ to succeed.
“I feel like Marnus is riding every single innings of his a little bit and he just looks like he wants it so bad,” Jaques tells Cricket.com in an exclusive chat.
“[He] almost wants it too much. That’s what I see. Sure, there have been technical issues, but I feel like he’s been on top of most of those. But for him to perform, he has to be really consistent in the way he approaches his cricket. He has to trust his processes.”
ALSO READ: Decoded ft. Phil Jaques: Why has batting become harder in Australia?
Twin failures at the Optus Stadium further added to Labuschagne’s woes, but what got pretty much the entirety of Australia talking about him overnight was how he went about his innings in the first dig, and his mode of dismissal in the second.
In the first innings, Labuschagne walked in against a red-hot Jasprit Bumrah in the third over on a day one minefield, and added 2 runs off 52 balls after being put down on nought off his very second ball. It was the slowest innings by an Australian in Test history.
In the second, he lasted only five balls after shouldering arms and being trapped LBW by a Bumrah length ball that kept low. There was a lot of bad luck involved in the second dismissal, but the fact that Labuschagne chose to not play a shot to a straight one just minutes after seeing Nathan McSweeney perish to a ball that kept low, made the experts question his frame of mind.
Decoding Labuschagne’s painful 52-ball stay in the first innings, Jaques insists that the right-hander made a grave error by setting himself up just to ‘survive’, rather than score runs.
“I think the ‘negative’ part in the first innings [in Perth] was him just trying to survive,” Jaques says.
“He was trying to survive rather than trying to set himself up to score runs. When the ball is seaming around, you do need to leave the ball, but you need to have intent with your footwork and get yourself into positions to score when the bowlers miss.
“I felt like that, at times, he was just in survival mode. When you’re in that mode, you can get yourself into some bad positions while defending.”
Unlike others, Jaques is not of the opinion that Labuschagne looked ‘mentally cooked’ in the second innings. Rather, according to the former Australia opener, the right-hander went to the other extreme and looked ‘over-pumped’.
“In the second innings, it looked like he wanted to show intent and he wanted to have real intensity about his batting and he probably went too far. Not with his decision making and aggressive he was but maybe with how pumped up he was. You want to have that intent but you want to have that calmness as well, when you bat.”
The former NSW head coach reckons that Labuschagne is currently struggling to find the right balance with regards to his approach.
“I always think that if you’ve got intent, and you're calm, that’s your sweet spot as a batsman,” Jaques asserts.
“You want to be watchful but, at the same time, get into positions to hit the bad balls for four while also managing to get a few singles off the good balls. You’ll also have to be able to leave well with intent. Most importantly, you want to be calm, level and steady in your emotions.”
There have been cricketers - past and present - who’ve been blamed for not putting in enough effort, but with Labuschagne, it’s quite the opposite. When it comes to the Queenslander, the biggest concern for many has been his reluctance to take a break. There are fears that the 30-year-old might be exerting himself too much during the off days, maybe even ‘overtraining’, endlessly batting in the nets.
Could exerting so much energy in the nets actually prove detrimental for a player?
“I don’t buy into ‘overtraining’ too much. I feel the problem is when you’re training for the sake of training,” Jaques says.
“When you get to that phase, you lose intensity.”
What Jaques does fear when it comes to Labuschagne, though, is that he might be overthinking and trying to address issues that are not really of any concern.
“Marnus trains with real purpose and real intensity. I suppose the trap that you can have with training so hard is that you kind of look for stuff that isn’t there sometimes.
“You can be really trying to tick every single box and almost get excessive compulsive with your training where you wear yourself out. You have to make sure that training is about preparing yourself for the game and to be ready for the challenges the game [ahead] might provide. You also have to ensure you’re sharp when you head into the game. It’s about finding the right balance.”
A veteran who has played 200 first-class games, Jaques knows exactly what Labuschagne is going through, having broken out of barren runs in his own career. In his four-year stint with NSW as head coach, the 45-year-old also worked with individuals who went through similar rotten runs where they felt like the universe conspired against them and did everything in its power to make them fail.
So, both as a veteran cricketer and a coach, what is one piece of advice Jaques would give to Labuschagne in lead-up to the Adelaide Test?
“I think he’s just got to trust what he does well and play to his strengths as much as he can,” Jaques asserts.
“He has to try and let go of the end result and has to just focus on batting as well as he can. My message to him would be to trust what he does and play to his strengths and do what he does as best as he can.
“If it’s not meant to be, it’s not meant to be. He can’t control the end result. Things happen on a cricket field where you’re gonna fail sometimes and you’re gonna succeed sometimes.
“Worrying about the end result and the score before you finish the process to get to that score - that’s where failure arises.”
And does Jaques believe Labuschagne will turn it around?
“I think he’ll turn it around, he is too good a player not to.”
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