Marnus goes to batting lab to recapture his edge

On the verge of joining an elite club of Australian cricketers, Marnus Labuschagne is using cutting-edge technology in his quest to recapture the touch that saw him crowned the world's best Test batter.

A converted warehouse in Melbourne's southeastern suburbs is the unlikely epicentre for bat fitting technology claimed to be a world first and which leading players like Marnus Labuschagne believe is long overdue.

The brainchild of Melbourne cricket coaches Shannon Young and Chris Hall, they have adapted a baseball metric called 'Balance Point Index' that allows players to optimise the weight and feel of their bats.

"The elevator pitch is we can now attach a value to the weight of a cricket bat," Young told cricket.com.au. "It's never been done before, we're the first people in the world who can do that."

After returning from last year's Ashes tour in which he used nine different bats, Labuschagne flew to Melbourne for a marathon seven-hour session at the Cricket Performance Lab fitting centre and indoor nets facility in Moorabbin.

"I just couldn't get that feel right," Labuschagne told cricket.com.au's Unplayable Podcast from Wellington ahead of the first Test against New Zealand.

"I batted with really light bats (during the Ashes) and I was getting really 'feely' for the ball, and kind of pushing at the ball a lot more than I'd done previously.

"I wanted to dive down and find out more about that and is there a reason that I'm making these errors now, compared to three or four years ago, where I felt like I was not."

Labuschagne, who will play his 50th Test in the NZ tour finale in Christchurch next month, followed up his long initial consultation with a return visit before last summer's Boxing Day Test.

His fitting proved a revelation after an Ashes campaign that saw him post a memorable century at Old Trafford but otherwise failed to pass fifty in all but one of his other nine innings.

"We would get him to hit balls, plug in the data with everything we capture, and when we explained to him why this bat performs this way, he was like 'yeah you're 100 per cent right – I've known this, but I've never had a way of objectively measuring it'," said Young, a close mentor of recent Australia debutant Jake Fraser-McGurk.

The BPI concept developed by Young, Richmond Tigers' head coach in Victorian Premier Cricket, and Hall, a computer scientist and former minor counties allrounder from the UK, has drawn other leading international players like Glenn Maxwell, Sophie Devine, Shan Masood and Marcus Stoinis to Moorabbin.

A lower BPI number suggests the player needs a bat with more weight closer to their hands, while a higher number calls for the weight to be distributed further down the bat.

BPI NUMBERS OF LEADING CRICKETERS

 

Nic Maddinson 86

Glenn Maxwell, Tom Rogers, Hayden Kerr 85

Marcus Stoinis, Josh Philippe 84

Jake Fraser-McGurk, Jason Sangha, Bryce Street 83

Marnus Labuschagne, Mitch Perry 82

Scott Boland 80

Will Pucovski, Nathan McSweeney 79

Scott Edwards 76

Sophie Devine 74

Sophie Reid 72

Ella Hayward 69

Labuschagne used his BPI to help guide his bat-maker at Kookaburra in crafting the pieces of willow he took to South Africa for a one-day tour he had earnt a late call-up for in August.

Whether the fitting played a part in his unlikely return to the 50-over team that stormed to a fairytale World Cup triumph in India is difficult to quantify.

But Labuschagne is adamant it has been beneficial, explaining: "It just that it gives you a metric for what you feel as a batter with the pick-up of a bat.

"I always say the more information you get is always better for you. I'm sure that's not everyone's cup of tea. People would definitely say that you (can) overcomplicate it.

"The best way I can explain it is: you don't see any half-decent golfer playing with clubs that they didn't get fitted with – and that's most people's hobby.

"So if it's your job, and you can find a way to get better at your job by just making sure you're using the right equipment and the right bat for you, then why not? Why not find out more?"

Labuschagne hopes it can help arrest a slide in his Test runs output that, although not alarming, he admits has been short of the high standards he sets himself.

His sum of 226 runs at 28.25 in 10 innings over the recent home summer overlooks the fact he made three crucial half-centuries in difficult batting conditions in Melbourne and Sydney against Pakistan.

Scores of 10, 1no, 3 and 5 against West Indies capped a below-par season.

The lean patch stands in contrast to the exalted company he could join during the two-Test tour of NZ; only six Australians (Don Bradman, Steve Smith, Greg Chappell, Ricky Ponting, Mike Hussey and Steve Waugh) have averaged more than 50 after 50 Tests.

After 48 matches, Labuschagne's batting average stands at 50.82.

The right-hander has never played in NZ but peeled off scores of 143, 50, 63, 19, 215 and 59 in three Tests against the Kiwis at home in his breakout 2019-20 campaign that propelled him to the top of the ICC's individual batting rankings.

"I was probably a little bit of an unknown – teams didn't really know much about me, they didn't really know the depths of my game," Labuschagne said of his golden summer.

"Compared to now where teams have seen me play for five, six years now, they know my strengths, they know my weaknesses.

"I think that's the challenge as a player, when teams start working out different ways to go about getting you out, you've got to continue to grow and get better."

Qantas Tour of New Zealand

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February 29 – March 4: First Test, Wellington, 9am AEDT

March 8-12: Second Test, Christchurch, 9am AEDT

Australia Test squad: Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Cameron Green, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitchell Marsh, Michael Neser, Matthew Renshaw, Steve Smith (vc), Mitchell Starc

New Zealand Test squad: Tim Southee (c), Tom Blundell (wk), Devon Conway, Matt Henry, Scott Kuggeleijn, Tom Latham, Daryl Mitchell, Will O'Rourke, Glenn Phillips, Rachin Ravindra, Mitchell Santner, Neil Wagner, Kane Williamson, Will Young.