The two failures left Labuschagne with 123 runs in his last 10 innings, of which 90 came at a single knock against New Zealand in March. Overall, this year he has an average of 24.50 on the tests, followed by 2023 in which that figure was 34.91, having been above 60 in three of the previous four years.
Labuschagne was already back in the nets when the opening Test concluded in Perth on Monday and was expected to train individually before the team met again a day earlier than planned in Adelaide.
“He would probably do half of what he usually does. Just try to lighten it up a bit,” Neil D’Costa told ESPNcricinfo. “Keep working on reacting more, not having such rigid plans. Every hitter goes through this. Almost everyone who is around 30 years old, they don’t know why that number is, they seem to have this problem. He’s a guy we all know, he He loves to play cricket. He never leaves a stone unturned. He is super fit. Does he think about things too much? I don’t know, possibly everyone does.
“When someone gets to the stage where he is the number one player in the world, he will become a target. He couldn’t keep going. He would be averaging 80. At some point, I don’t want to. They say it had to happen… it happens to them. many players. They try too hard and they like it. [Virat] Kohli you have to continue trusting yourself, trusting your processes, trusting what you do. Come back and find a way the next day.”
Labuschagne’s lack of positivity in the box came under significant attention after his first innings. “The way he’s been playing, to me it’s a very negative mentality, and it has been for a while,” Aaron Finch said on channel 7. “What that does, when you face big attacks (Jasprit Bumrah is as good as we’ve ever seen, Siraj is a very good fast bowler), it just allows them to adapt, you’re not putting a lot of pressure on them, so “Their margin of error becomes enormous.”
D’Costa, who had already spoken to Labuschagne since the test, believed he had the right to think he could abandon Bumrah’s delivery. “That ball measured 8.3 meters [from the stumps]that goes over the stumps all day, every day,” he said. “It just touched the top of the stumps. With a millisecond to make a decision, he saw the length and let go and skated. Are we going to lose sleep over it? I’m not. “Would you like me to score runs, absolutely?”
Labuschagne’s two lbw dismissals in Perth come amid a period in which a tendency to be caught playing away from his body had seeped into his game, which D’Costa attributes in part to working on his batting. of white balls.
“If you look at how he plays, he lets a lot of balls pass. He always has,” he said. “I think maybe he was working too hard to be a one-day player, so for a while he lost that. And he started stealing. Let me tell you, they [India] pitched so well. They knew exactly that he wanted that ball on the leg stump. They didn’t bowl there. In any case, they launched themselves wide. This team is really well prepared. “They did very well.”
After the loss, captain Pat Cummins acknowledged that Labuschagne’s struggles would be a focus in the coming days.
“Marn, along with some guys on the team, didn’t have the week we would have wanted,” he said. “It’s no secret how hard batsmen, particularly Marn, work in the nets. He’s always trying to find those little marginal gains. There will be a lot of conversation this week with the coaches about his approach and what he could be doing differently.” .
Andrew McGlashan is deputy editor of ESPNcricinfo
