Last Updated on 2 hours ago by Charbel Coorey
Marnus Labuschagne feels he is primed for a huge season after the “longest break” he’s had over the last seven or eight years.
Australia’s number three has felt the brunt of non-stop cricket in recent years, admitting he’s been applying stop-gap solutions in attempts to arrest slumps in form. Now, he feels the benefit of spending the past couple of months at home honing his game.
Marnus Labuschagne focuses on basics in attempt to rediscover his best form
Labuschagne’s career has been a tale of two halves. His first 13 Tests yielded an average of 72.82 with nine fifties and five hundreds. It has been a rocky road since the 2023 Ashes in particular, averaging just 26.61 in the past three years with no hundred.
Labuschagne admitted that time at home after white-ball tours of Pakistan and Bangladesh was much-needed. He has enjoyed the sort of time that international cricketers rarely get.
“After eight weeks of being able to just go back to my fundamentals and working on my game – spending hours and hours on the simple things, working on my shapes and my technique as a as a whole – is something that I definitely needed,” Labuschagne told reporters, as quoted by cricket.com.au.
It is well-known how much Australia’s number three loves cricket. Also, he thinks about the game a lot which can be detrimental during shaky runs of form. But, the gap in action has given Labuschagne a new lease of life.
“When you’re on the road playing for the last seven or eight years straight, this is the longest break I’ve had,” Labuschagne said.
“There’s been times where I’ve tried to get things in order, but I just run out of time to fully commit to those small changes – if that’s with your grip or your stance or whatever – and you revert back to what you’ve been doing and you kind of never get off that cycle until you have a little gap.”
Spotlight on Labuschagne in two-match series against Bangladesh
Coach Andrew McDonald is a big supporter of Labuschagne. He has backed him publicly on numerous occasions, including as recently as June this year.
“We saw him finish off last summer the way that we wanted him to, in Sydney and the way he started that Ashes series in Perth. So if you look at the bookends of last summer for Marnus, in terms of Test cricket, it was excellent, and you look at the front-end of the summer domestically in red-ball cricket, it was more of what we’d like to see,” McDonald said.
“So there’s a very good player in amongst all of that. Our job is to work with him to bring out the best in his game, and we still think it’s there.”
However, despite the coach’s backing, the spotlight remains on Labuschagne after a lean few years. A poor series against Bangladesh will only amplify the pressure on his spot, but the 32-year-old is confident of finding form.
“Over a four- or five-year period, some of those technical things, they keep growing and growing and growing, and I’ve kept trying to find short-term solutions to things,” he said.
“It’s not perfect, and you’re striving for perfection. But it’s hard to find long-term solutions in such a short timeframe when you have short windows.
“That’s why I think this two-month break has been just exactly what I needed to get my game back to where I needed to be.”
Australia’s two-match series against Bangladesh begins on August 13 in Darwin – the start of a mammoth 12 months where Pat Cummins’ team will play up to 21 Tests (including the World Test Championship Final if they qualify).
