Head of Insight, Ben Jones, takes a deep dive into the career of Marnus Labuschagne, using data from CricViz’s world-leading Centurion product.
When he was first selected for Australia, Marnus Labuschagne averaged below 35 in the Sheffield Shield. He had just four centuries from over 60 FC innings.
When first told to bat No.3 in Test cricket, he averaged 36 there for Queensland. He was an informed punt, amidst an underwhelming crop of batters, but a punt nonetheless.
He was never really trumpeted as the next big thing, never young enough to feel like a prodigy, nor with the weight of runs to be a late-bloomer banging the door down. Marnus Labuschagne just sort of arrived in international cricket without anyone noticing – then we all looked up, and he was the best batter in the world.
And then, well – he wasn’t. Because Labuschagne isn’t working. No matter which way you slice it, whether you lean on the numbers or the eye-test, he has been struggling for a good period of time. In his last 14 Tests his average is below 30, with one century to his name – quite a fall for a player that averaged over 60 from his previous 35 matches.
So what’s gone wrong?
Well, being a seamer bowling to Labuschagne used to be one of the toughest challenges around. Now, they’re queuing up. From its peak back in 2020, Labuschagne’s average against pace has got worse every year for each of the last five.
That’s the killer for him, because his dominance was always built on a mastery of the fundamentals. Not necessarily mastery of technique – he’s always had unorthodox traits – but his statistical excellence was firmly built on batting’s main challenge: repelling the good length delivery from a seamer. At his best, Labuschagne was averaging over 70 against those balls. Since the start of last year, he’s averaging 14 against them.
His defence has been floundering. Across that 2019-2022 peak, Labuschagne would play 132 defensive strokes before one led to a wicket, the best in the world barring Kane Williamson. From the start of last year to now, that’s fallen to just 53.
And yet when you look at the level of control with which Labuschagne is batting, there hasn’t really been a drop-off. Since the start of 2023 his false shot percentage has been 16%, a touch higher than the overall average for Test batters; in the two years prior, Labuschagne stood at 15%.
You can interpret this in one of two ways. An optimist would say that he’s simply going through a period of bad luck, where his control is not being rewarded, and would plead patience saying that he’ll revert to his excellent average soon. A pessimist – and a realist – might point out that early-career Labuschagne was astonishingly lucky.
From the 2019 Ashes, to the end of the 2021/22 edition, less than half of the chances Marnus gave up against seamers were taken. If Marnus gave a catching chance while batting, it was taken less than half of the time – the global average was 80%. The reversion to the mean in the subsequent years was always expected, but it’s worth re-iterating, as the chart above shows. Arguably the biggest factor in Labuschagne’s average falling is that teams aren’t dropping chances off him any more. In that Ashes cycle, Labuschagne averaged 64.17. If a typical percentage of catches had been taken off him, he would have averaged just under 50. Still good. Not great.
Indeed, reversion to the mean is a general theme. In those big beast years, Labuschagne was massively outperforming expectations given the quality of the deliveries bowled to him. That’s not unusual for the best batters in the world, but the degree to which he was doing so was a huge shock. A man with no remarkable red ball pedigree was suddenly doing twice as well as you’d imagine. But slowly, the gap between expectations – the xAverage based on the deliveries he faced – reduced, and in the last two years (actual average 32, xAverage 29) that gap is all but gone.
So, a streak of fortune and form evening out over time is clearly a factor in Labuschagne’s struggles. However, there are still some technical and strategic changes in his game that could be leading to these worse results. Facing pace this year, Labuschagne is leaving the ball 35% of the time – more than ever before in Test cricket. It isn’t a huge increase from previous years, either fallow or run-laden, but it is an increase. The perception of Labuschagne as increasingly passive is borne out in the numbers.
Not that there is anything wrong with leaving the ball. You can be a relentless leaver outside off if you’re dragging bowlers towards you, and your strength off your pads, and Labuschagne has always had plenty of that in his game. In form, his eye was good enough to let balls go that were extraordinarily tight into off stump. On close inspection, that eye might be erring; his average leave this year is almost a foot wider than at his peak.
Being that bit less certain about where his off stump is, that bit less sure of when to play, has meant that while he’s playing at fewer deliveries, he’s playing more at the dangerous ones – the ones in the channel. It’s no coincidence that in the era when he was averaging almost 100 against balls in the channel, he was leaving the vast majority alone, preying only on the least threatening deliveries. That’s not been the case for a while now.
More generally, those dangerous balls have been the ones moving away from him. Despite Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj both getting him at Perth with deliveries that were coming back in, Labuschagne’s collapse in form has been against two things: away swing, and channel lines.
Since the World Test Championship final in 2023, Labuschagne has suffered a string of nick offs. Stuart Broad drew him into poking at a wide one at Edgbaston, then Ollie Robinson had him caught keeper at Lord’s. Mark Wood found success with a wider release angling into Labuschagne and had him nicked to slip, then last home summer, both Aamer Jamal and Alzarri Joseph echoed that dismissal, with slightly wider releases angling in, again both wickets nicked behind.
His issues aren’t only around these dismissals – his average against balls seaming back into him has fallen from 49 to 21 – but it feels like the most existential. Not getting out to those balls was key to Marnus’ batting identity. Remove the nick off, and defend your stumps well, and there’s not a whole lot of other ways to get out in red ball cricket.
Similarly, that identity has grown murkier in other ways. When Labuschagne first came into the Test team, it was notable how often he drove through cover. In his imperious era, Labuschagne drove in front of square on the offside once every 10-15 balls, roughly once every other over. He punished bowlers when they erred, taxed their mistakes. This year, that figure is up to 31, driving three, maybe four times across a session – if he lasts that long. A crucial component of his run scoring has fallen out of his game.
I am not a batting coach, and try not to make suggestions which make it seem otherwise. But sometimes the data is so clear it’s hard not to arrive at conclusions, strong-armed by the numbers. In 2024, Labuschagne is getting forward 17% of the time against seamers, the least he’s done so across his Test career. At peak, he was forward more than half the time, smothering the lateral movement or offering a strong attacking base. Setting up more across his stumps affecting not only his ability to score through cover, without the added benefits of improving his leaving, but it’s thrown his overall footwork into question. He’s paying a high price without much, if any, reward.
Let’s not be too melodramatic. Labuschagne has been struggling for 18 months, not four years. His record in pink ball Tests is strong, with more runs under the lights at Adelaide Oval than anyone else. What’s more, watching Virat Kohli at Perth, Australia saw only too well how quickly prolonged batting slumps can fall away, how quickly players can refind their mojo. What’s more, the Indian offers a clear template, that sticking to your core plan – in Labuschagne’s case, punishing full deliveries, leaving good lengths, and not getting dragged too far across in your set up – can bring you back to your core results.
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