'Longest break' has Labuschagne primed for massive summer

Marnus Labuschagne says an eight-week block of training to focus on the fundamentals of his game has been "exactly what I needed" to get back to his world-beating best.

Labuschagne was at his peak between 2019-2021 when he averaged 72.82 in Test cricket with five hundreds and nine fifties in 13 Tests. In contrast, his past 20 Tests since the 2023 Ashes tour have seen him average 26.61, with a best of 90.

The 32-year-old now says a solid two months at home in Queensland to strip back his game – the past few weeks of which has been training alongside Australia teammates - has him primed for a huge summer, starting next week against Bangladesh in Darwin.

"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 in Brisbane today.

Labuschagne's near-insatiable appetite for cricket is well known, but he now admits the constant grind of professional cricket had worn him down.

He has been one of Australia's hardest-working players, turning out for his Big Bash and state sides at every opportunity, as well as regularly spending winters in the County Championship, something he eschewed this season for a stint on the T20 circuit in Pakistan.

His 'too much cricket is never enough' mantra was underlined when it was revealed he had broken his right thumb in the fifth Ashes Test last January, but played out the summer in domestic cricket for Brisbane Heat and Queensland.

"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 of his stint at home since playing ODIs in Pakistan and Bangladesh earlier in the winter.

"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.

"So it's been really nice to go back and find my best form and what it looks like for me to play at my best. The preparation has been great for that, and hopefully we can see the results off the back of all the hard work."

The Queenslander now admits his incessant tinkering had resulted in a series of stop-gap fixes, which he insists he's now unpicked in favour of more lasting change.

"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.

"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."

With no century since the Old Trafford Test in mid-2023, Labuschagne admits he was "rushing" as he searched for a return to form.

"It's that little bit of lack of confidence in trusting the process, and then you try and rush the process and make errors," he said.

"You just want to get to that three-figure score. You want to get that score rather than just staying in the moment.

"And I think back, and I've reflected a lot in these past two months about when I played at my best, and it's just letting the game come to me and being able to read what's happening in the game and just trusting my game and technique and process, and then the runs (will) take care of itself."

NRMA Insurance Bangladesh Test series

First Test: August 13-17, Marrara Stadium, Darwin, 10am (local)

Second Test: August 22-26, Great Barrier Reef Arena, Mackay, 10am (local)

Australia squad: Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Cameron Green, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Jake Weatherald, Beau Webster

Bangladesh squad (first Test): Najmul Hossain Shanto (c), Mehidy Hasan Miraz (vc), Soumya Sarkar, Shadman Islam, Tanzid Hasan Tamim, Mominul Haque, Mushfiqur Rahim, Litton Das, Amite Hasan, Jaker Ali, Taijul Islam, Taskin Ahmed, Hasan Mahmud, Syed Khaled Ahmed, Ebadot Hossain Chowdhury, Musfik Hasan