How Marnus became the world’s best Test batter

“Many people, including myself, laughed when in 2019 you said you wanted to be the best player in the world but look who’s laughing now!” it read.

Labuschagne had long set this as his goal. “Marnus has wanted to be the best Test batsman in the world since he was about four,” his manager, Dean Kino, says with a laugh.

Blair Copelin, his junior coach at Redlands Tigers Cricket Club in Brisbane, recalls telling Labuschagne that one day he could be capable of such greatness, and was promptly met with a look in the youngster’s eyes and a nod that suggested that “he had obviously been thinking about that for years”.

Setting out such lofty ambitions early in one’s career can often lead to accusations of arrogance and delusion, but the very best athletes thrive on that drive and focus. Sam Warburton, the former Wales and British & Irish Lions rugby union flanker, whom I know well, is one of the most humble athletes I have ever met. Yet, from a young age his stated aim was to be the best player in the world in his position, often using a personal identity statement of “I am the world’s best seven” in any times of doubt.

It was early in the county season of 2019 that Labuschagne had revealed his desire to become the world’s best batsman to some of his new Glamorgan colleagues, including Hemphrey. It was little wonder many of them thought that he was dreaming. Although Labuschagne had played five Tests by then, he had averaged a modest 26.25, and even a place in the Ashes squad for that summer appeared unlikely.

But after a fine campaign that year for Glamorgan, relishing the increased number of games with 1,114 runs at an average of over 65, a gutsy 41 out of a total of 105 in an Australia trial match on a spicy pitch at Southampton changed all that, eventually leading to a shock return to Test cricket as a concussion substitute for Steve Smith during the Lord’s Test.

It was a transformative time for him, a far cry from his formative years in Klerksdorp, a mining town in South Africa, before he moved to Australia aged ten when his father, Andre, was offered the task of running a new mine in Queensland.

Labuschagne, 28, is still ranked No.1 – with only Joe Root taking the mantle from him for a time in 2022 – but the Englishman Hemphrey provides an interesting point of comparison on Labuschagne’s journey.

They arrived together at Glamorgan that 2019 season, Hemphrey as a local and Labuschagne as the overseas player. They had very similar first-class records, averaging in the low thirties with four centuries each, though the 24-year-old Labuschagne was five years younger.

Hemphrey, born in Doncaster but raised in Kent and having come through their academy system, had emigrated to Australia in 2013 in frustration at not getting a county contract. When he received a call in 2015 from Queensland’s chairman of selectors, Trevor Hohns, asking him to make his first-class debut, he thought it was a prank. At the time, Hemphrey was working for Virgin, “throwing bags” at Brisbane Airport.

It was actually Labuschagne who was dropped for Hemphrey, and later in 2016 when both men made centuries against Western Australia, it was Labuschagne rather than Hemphrey who was dropped for Joe Burns, who was returning from the Australia side.

But how their subsequent paths have differed. While Labuschagne is now on top of the world, Hemphrey works for Racing Queensland, and has not played cricket seriously since Glamorgan’s Bob Willis Trophy match against Gloucestershire in 2020 after falling foul of intransigent ECB regulations that, because he had played as a local for Queensland in the Sheffield Shield, would not categorise him as an England-qualified player.

Hemphrey knows how Labuschagne was viewed back in Australia then. It has transpired that Labuschagne was a rare positive to emerge from the Sandpapergate scandal because if he had not played in those five early Tests – with Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft banned – he would not have been able to sign for Glamorgan in 2019. The ruling then, since altered, was that overseas players had to have played international cricket.

But there was a feeling in Australia that he should not have played those Tests, that other players were far more deserving and that Labuschagne was just a favourite of Justin Langer, the head coach, because of his extraordinary work ethic. “A lot of players thought he got picked just because Langer liked him,” Hemphrey says.

Labuschagne had a reputation for throwing his wicket away unnecessarily. “He gave the bowlers too many ways to get him out, really,” Hemphrey adds. And then there was his attitude, which was often misconstrued, especially by the old guard of Sheffield Shield veterans. There were all the tics and histrionics, the feeling that his yearning to practise so much was selfish and a general sense that he was just too cocky.

Labuschagne and Hemphrey became good friends at Glamorgan. Labuschagne was there at the hospital in Cardiff at 6am with food when Hemphrey’s wife was giving birth to their first child. Hemphrey is full of flattery for him: “He’s a good bloke, extremely loyal, hard-working, dedicated.”

Hemphrey also played for Redlands Tigers under Copelin, who first saw Labuschagne at the age of 13.

“My first impression was probably the same impression people still get,” Copelin, who is now director of cricket at Gregory Terrace, a private school in Brisbane, says. “He had a lot of energy and a distinct love of the game. He has always had an unbelievable work ethic and a strong desire to get better.

“People would say he had a bad attitude, but it was just that he had so much passion. The big appeals, the chirp, I think people misinterpreted it and now know it was that he just had a strong love for the game.”

Labuschagne is deeply religious. He met his future wife, Rebekah, at the Gateway Baptist Church in Redlands, Brisbane. The pair married in 2017 and they had a daughter, Hallie, last year. He has an eagle sticker on his bat relating to his favourite Bible verse, Isaiah 40: 31, which reads: “For those that hope in the Lord, he shall renew their strength. He shall soar on wings like eagles. He shall run and not grow weary and talk and not be faint.”

“I speak to him every day and I have never heard him swear and never say a bad thing about any other human being,” says Kino, a Melbourne-based lawyer who looks after cricketers as a hobby and whose only other client when agreeing to manage Labuschagne in 2015 was Kevin Pietersen.

“He has impeccable ethics, morals, and behaviour. He is the most unlikely person to say or do the wrong thing and he cares deeply about his teammates. He has a genuine appreciation of being able to do what he does, which comes back to his religion.

“He doesn’t fear failure. As long as he works on the process the results are out of his hands. Other players fear failure. It is a unique characteristic.”

There is little doubt then that Labuschagne is not your archetypical Australian cricketer, with even Hemphrey admitting that “he can wind people up”.

But Kino is keen to address a commonly held, very harsh perception that he is a little “weird”.

“There is nothing weird about him,” he says. “He is quirky, but not weird. He just loves what he is doing, and he is a much deeper thinker than people give him credit for. Because he is so passionate people assume it is a lack of maturity, but it is not that, he just loves what he is doing. How many pro athletes do you see enjoying themselves as much as Marnus does out on the field?

“He has just been named the seventh-most marketable sportsperson in Australia [he is an ambassador for the likes of Weet-Bix, Kookaburra, Nike and Gatorade but just focuses on his cricket while Kino deals with such off-field stuff]. The comment was that the fans just love him because he is so authentic. He has time for kids all the time.”

Indeed, during his first match for Glamorgan this season, having just been dismissed cheaply, Labuschagne was climbing the steps of the Sophia Gardens pavilion when a young girl asked for his autograph. He duly stopped and obliged when most players would have merely stomped off in high dudgeon.

When Labuschagne had been little more than a kid himself at 17, Copelin had made a defining decision that it was time for his protege to see another coach. Copelin’s daughter was ill, and after a meeting with Labuschagne’s father in which he stressed his son’s desire to play for Australia, Copelin called Neil D’Costa in Sydney.

D’Costa had already helped Michael Clarke and Phillip Hughes and he knew of Labuschagne, even if he had not been that impressed with him at first.

“I was coaching New South Wales Under-19 against Queensland Under-19s,” D’Costa says. “Marnus was appealing from deep extra cover for lbws. I come from a conservative Anglo-Indian family and the traditions of the game are very much entrenched in my DNA so appealing from deep cover … ”

D’Costa has a reputation as something of a maverick and straight-talking (with the odd expletive thrown in) coach but as Copelin says, “I knew he would push Marnus’ buttons.”

And he certainly did that.

“The traditional way where you troubleshoot with people’s batting, I don’t do that any more,” D’Costa says. “I start from scratch. I said to Marnus, ‘I’m not going to tell you what you’re doing wrong, I’m going to put you on to a program where you are at zero and walk you through how it works, why it works, what I do, why I’m doing it. If you like it, take it, if you don’t, then f*** off!’ He bought into it straight away.”

Labuschagne’s desire to practise has always been legendary.

“When he says six more balls, you know it is going to be 60 more,” Copelin says. “There is one story that sticks out. We were trying to get the athletic back leg, knee down a bit to hit the ball through point, hit the sweepers hard, getting him to play the ball late. He struggled with it. So, I said, ‘Ah, Marnus, you’re wasting my time. I’m going. You can come back to me when you’ve done it and worked it out.’

“The thing with Marnus is he had a bowling machine at home and his mum, dad or sister would feed him balls. He rang me up and said, ‘Yeah, I’ve got it.’ And that was that afternoon. That’s what he does. If he struggles with something, he has got that much resilience and perseverance that he’ll go and find ways. He really likes the problem-solving aspect of the game. For someone who was never that good at school he has done remarkably well in that aspect.”

Even though D’Costa stresses that it is “Blair’s relationship” with Labuschagne, he has become the batsman’s mentor – “Marnus the player was really built by Marnus and Neil,” Kino says – and Labuschagne still sees both of them for sessions, meeting them together in Brisbane before joining Glamorgan this season.

But it is also clear that the Glamorgan head coach, Matthew Maynard, had a huge influence on Labuschagne in 2019. “I would put so much of Marnus’s success down to Matt,” Hemphrey says. This is not something that irks D’Costa. “As far as I’m concerned, if you are someone’s mentor you want anyone in his life that adds value, right?” he says.

Labuschagne was recommended to Glamorgan by Copelin because he knew the director of cricket, Mark Wallace, from the former wicketkeeper’s time at Redlands Tigers. “I sent Wally a message saying, ‘You need to get this fella, he’s a beauty and you’ll get him cheap too,’ “Copelin says.

Glamorgan signed Labuschagne for his character as much as anything. He was actually one of the lowest-paid players at the club initially, and was happy with that, asking only for a house near the ground and the ability to use the club’s practice facilities whenever he wanted.

“We knew he loved the game, lived for it, and had been dubbed the new ‘Mr Cricket’ in terms of that obsession, if you like,” Maynard says. “I felt we needed an overseas [player] who had that passion for the game, brought something different, brought a lot of conversation to the dressing room.”

They definitely got that. Maynard took one look at Labuschagne in the nets and told Wallace to sign him on a five-year contract. Labuschagne is still with Glamorgan and feels a tremendous loyalty for their punt on him, declining offers worth at least double elsewhere on the county scene.

It is little surprise that Maynard and Labuschagne clicked so easily. Having seen them together a little, it reminds me of the player-coach relationship Maynard and Duncan Fletcher had at Glamorgan, forever talking about the game, its techniques and theories to improve it.

“Definitely,” Maynard agrees. “I think that’s why we got on. When we get down to it, we will bore our wives stupid with our conversations. They will go, ‘Ah, not this again, why are you debating again?’ ”

D’Costa thinks that Labuschagne felt comfortable because he knew instantly that Maynard liked him, which had not always been the case with some coaches in Australia.

“He felt wanted, he could just be him,” Hemphrey says by way of confirmation. “He respected Matt because he was actually talking cricket to him, and in depth about batting, which we weren’t getting here in Australia.

“Once he learnt to bat smart, I knew Marnus would score runs because he just loves being out there. He hates being in the dressing room.”

In Cardiff, Labuschagne became friends with James Botham, the Cardiff and Wales rugby player and grandson of you-know-who. The pair found themselves living close to each other in the Pontcanna area near Sophia Gardens and first met in the Robin Hood pub once owned by the singer Charlotte Church’s mother.

“He was always playing cricket in the back yard,” Botham says. “He was using those reaction balls that go in any direction. No wonder he can hit the ball so well.

“Even when I went for a dog walk he had to bring a bat and a ball and he was smacking a cricket ball for the dogs.”

Fast forward to that day at Lord’s when Labuschagne replaced Smith, and Botham just happened to be there with a Cardiff rugby colleague, James Down. They passed Labuschagne in the nets on the Nursery Ground as they entered.

“We walked past and Marnus was throwing the ball for someone,” Botham says. “Basically, we just gave him some shit, saying, ‘You’re being a ball boy.’ We were chatting in the box later and then it was suddenly like, ‘Shit, Marnus is coming into bat.’

“I was over the moon for him. With sport you have to take your chances and, bloody hell, didn’t he do that? It was so weird watching him.”

Hemphrey was equally thrilled. “We were in Colwyn Bay playing Lancashire and everyone was dying for him to do well, as much as we wanted England to win,” he says. “I was so happy. I had played more with him over that 12-month period than anyone. I had seen how hard he had worked.”

Nevertheless, Hemphrey is still keen for England to win the Ashes this summer. “I’ll still be sending Rob Key a dossier on how to get him out,” he says, with a chuckle. “I know Keysy from my Kent days.”

Worryingly for England, D’Costa, who has been working on Labuschagne’s balance recently by getting him to hit balls from a crash mat, thinks there is so much more to come from him, despite that No 1 ranking and a Test average of 57.52, with ten centuries.

“Word for word, I said to him recently, ‘You’re not even close to how good you are. I genuinely believe that’,” D’Costa says.

The reason?

“I asked him to look at Kane Williamson, Joe Root, Virat Kohli, Steve Smith and himself, and watch the last ten outs and tell me who stands out,” he says.

It was Labuschagne. Too often he gets himself out, revisiting an old habit.

“Too many times you think, ‘What was he doing?’ ” D’Costa says. “You don’t see that from the others.”

Labuschagne’s average against England is “only” 45.86, so you can see where the improvement is. England had better watch out.