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Follow UsAdelaide. Pink-ball Test. Mitchell Starc firing. Top-order batters getting runs. Travis Head scoring a ton. Victory firmly in sight.
After an utterly dire week in Perth, life is good again for Australia.
But here’s what should make the Kangaroos happier than all the aforementioned things put together: Marnus Labuschagne is back.
For, on the day, what truly enabled the Aussie turnaround was Labuschagne’s grit, determination and class, with the 30-year-old scoring 64 of the most significant and important runs of his career.
Labuschagne entered this game in Adelaide arguably under more pressure than any top-order batter has been in over a decade, having posted seven single-digit scores across his last eight innings.
The numbers were concerning, but what seemed to make people push Labuschagne to the edge was the way he went about his batting, with the right-hander giving away the impression he had no idea where his next run was coming from.
He looked mentally shot in Perth, with his 52-ball 2 in the first innings and his ill-fated leave in the second summing up his state of mind.
Next thing you know, the 30-year-old had the entirety of Australia clamouring for his drop, crying for the selectors to put the Queenslander out of his misery.
So, roughly around 5.00 PM on December 6 (Friday), when Labuschagne walked out to bat with Australia one down for not-too-many, his place in the Test side, his reputation AND the series all were on the line as he braced to face a red-hot Jasprit Bumrah under lights. And there was also the small matter of the entirety of Australia doubting him.
Put all this in context and you’ll precisely understand why the right-hander can consider 126-ball 64 today at the Adelaide Oval as one of the finest showings of his career.
Intent is one word that had almost gone missing from Labuschagne’s dictionary this year. At his best, the 30-year-old was someone who used to breeze to 30s and 40s in Root’esque fashion. But lower the scores got, and longer the barren run extended, he became so desperate to ‘just be there’ that his batting became all about survival rather than run-scoring. Nothing personified this more than his painful 52-ball outing in Perth, where he’d attacked a horror 3.8% of his deliveries.
Labuschagne knew he needed to fix this in Adelaide. He did.
In terms of raw numbers, the jump - in terms of how much he attacked - wasn’t massive. Labuschagne attacked 18.3% of the balls he faced, which was still the second-lowest among all batters that faced 50+ balls in the first innings.
Yet he was discernibly more proactive, particularly bringing the wrists into play, employing the trademark flick against balls that were on the stumps.
As it turned out, the flick was Labuschagne’s most productive shot in this innings, with 33% of his runs (21 runs) coming via that stroke.
The last two times Labuschagne collected 20 or more runs via the flick in an innings was against England at Manchester last year and West Indies in Perth in 2022. What ties together both these innings? Well, he got a ton in both instances.
So in this innings, Labuschagne got something to work which made him tick in knocks where he was at his fluent best.
But it wasn’t by chance that Labuschagne got these many balls on the stumps that he got to flick. He *made* the Indian bowlers bowl there through his impeccable leaving.
Labuschagne faced hell-ish conditions in his first 50 balls, all of which came under the lights, and left a whopping 48% of them. Sure enough he was helped by some ‘extra wide’ bowling from the India seamers, but he left judiciously on length, even deliveries that were dangerously close to the stumps.
Leaves aside, what was commendable was how Labuschagne did not go ‘fishing’ outside off, something he’d been guilty of doing far too much across the past 18 months or so.
Knowing what to leave and what to play meant that the right-hander showed impeccable control. Labuschagne finished the innings with a control percentage of 87.3%, by some distance the highest among all batters.
What really told you Labuschagne was ‘back’ was when he started showing authority through the off-side. Throughout this year, he’d almost shelved the cover drive out of fear, but he brought out the cover drive, cut and dab through the off-side once he was into his 40s. Harshit Rana was at the receiving end of the Queenslander’s best passage of play this series, with the right-armer getting taken apart for three boundaries in the same over.
Once he was in 60s, Labuschagne was in total control and it looked like there was a hundred there for the taking. Which is why he was both devastated and livid in having thrown it all away to the part-time seam of Nitish Reddy, trying to guide one wide of gully. A fatal lapse in concentration.
A fairytale comeback hundred, then, wasn’t to be for the 30-year-old. But the signs were nothing but positive, and Australia will now believe that they can count on their talisman in the remainder of the series. That’s massive in the context of the series, given the form Head finds himself in.
If Australia can get runs from Labuschagne - who will inevitably bat time, too - it will set up every innings perfectly for the Kangaroos.
In the lead-up to this Test, former Australia opener Phil Jaques told Cricket.com that a batter’s sweet spot is when they have intent, but are also calm at the same time.
“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,” Jaques said.
Labuschagne couldn’t have been farther from that sweet spot in Perth. Here, though, he found it and succeeded. Just as his good mate Travis Head did.
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