BRISBANE: Shortly after India’s win in Perth, Sean Llyod, President of the Redlands Tigers Cricket Club, had come out and offered Marnus Labuschagne an option of sorts. The Australia's No 3 had been struggling with form and quite a few comments were made to drop him for the second Test in Adelaide. With almost nine days between two games, Llyod had offered Labuschagne an option of turning up for his local club if he wanted to.
While Labuschagne didn’t play a club game that weekend, he did the second-best thing possible. Days after the Perth game, he was at Wellington Point in Brisbane, having a hit in the Tigers nets. It was nothing new for him, and neither was it the case for Llyod and others in the club. Labuschagne has been given his own set of keys and can walk in and use the nets whenever he wants to. And so is the case for quite a few of the Tigers cricketers.
After all, it has been the place the 30-year-old has spent almost two-thirds of his life. Llyod himself has known him since 2008 when he joined the club. The two of them used to travel together and Labuschagne loved talking about all things cricket. “I used to catch the train into the city of Brisbane CBD for work. Even at an early age, he'd love to fill up on information. To the point where if you're sitting on the train, and he'd come and sit next to you. We'd talk about cricket. Some days it made the train travel go quite quickly,” Llyod recalls in a conversation with this daily.
Being grounded, and humble while having the self-belief of a mountain has always been Labuschagne’s strengths. To use Llyod’s words, “he was destined to be.” Labuschagne believed that if someone puts in the time, work or effort, and things fall in place, you could become a great cricketer. Combine this with his love for cricket and batting, one could see why he wants to face as many balls as he does in training. He believes that he has to spend as much time, put in the grind to get the desired result.
And that goes for his bowling too. While he often bowls leggies, ahead of this summer the Queenslander started bowling seam up, throwing his hat in the ring as an extra option. He made some ruffles in Sheffield Shield, sending down 33.2 overs in two games for Queensland. So much so that on a spicy pitch in Perth, Pat Cummins turned to him when India were piling on.
“It's funny, the general public has just seen him for the first time. We've been putting up with him for a long time,” Llyod laughs. “Any training night down at Tigers, under lights, even if he wasn't bowling too well, you could always hear him. Every ball was almost like a potential wicket. There'd always be the arms in the air, and the ooohs and the aaahs. That would be Marnus. He's always believed in himself as a bowler. He still does. He's always changed it up. I think he's given himself two options. That's the guy he is.”
While Labuschagne is still as obsessed with cricket and batting - as he always has been - he has matured as a person. He knows himself and what he does in this sport aren’t the most important things in life.He has a young family, and is aware of everyone around him. He spends as much time possible with his family while never shying away from calling his mates at Tigers to see how they did on a match day and ask for their scores.
At the same time, he knew what was at stake after the loss in Perth. So when he turned up at the Tigers nets to train, he came in with a purpose. In the first Test against India, the No 3 batter had gone into a shell, not looking to keep the strike moving. In the first innings, he scored just two runs in 52 balls. And that is just not how he is as a batter. So, he picked up the bat and tried to work things out the best way he knew. Bat, bat and bat.
“I think technically there were some things that weren't working for him in his set-up. I believe that he had been working on those so far as momentum and hip position. He's always been a positive batter, turning over the strike. To see him not turn over the strike and go for that the other week where he didn't score 50 balls is very uncharacteristic. It wasn't him, I'd say. I think he just got stuck in a rut where he tried something and it didn't really come off for him. He has definitely been training on more positive batting,” Llyod explains.
As fate would have it, Labuschagne’s work helped him get into his groove in Adelaide where he scored a crucial fifty in the first innings. More than the half-century, the time he spent in the middle and the intent he showed to score runs would be pleasing for Labuschagne.
What better way to come to your home ground than after finding some form. “He'll be primed. He loves playing at the Gabba,” says Llyod.
“It's his own backyard, and watch out. He'll be on the march to make sure that India are well aware that that's his turf. It's a great atmosphere. It's a real amphitheatre. Every seat is like you're on top of the action. The noise from the crowd, I can only just imagine what it's like in the middle when you hit a six or take a wicket. Just to hear that roar. That's got to lift you to be ten feet tall. It'd be like walking on clouds. That's a marvellous feeling.”
“A lot of kids around Brisbane, around Queensland, who play grassroots cricket, if you ask them who their hero is, half of them, probably more than three-quarters of them are going to say, my hero is Marnus. They idolise him when he's a hero as well as what he does on the field, but it's also the person that he is as well, that's important.”
It’s almost 7 PM on Friday in Brisbane. As one strolls down the street from The Gabba and turns towards Lytton Road, there comes a bus stop. On the digital screen at the stopping, blinks an ad. It reads “See Marnus put it all on the line” with an intense picture of Labuschagne and a countdown to the start of the match on Saturday. Indeed, expect Labuschagne to put it all on the line in his backyard.