Battling for his place in the side, Marnus Labuschagne made minor technical adjustments to his batting that ended up making a major difference as his vital hand of 64 contributed to Australia's comprehensive win over India in the second Test in Adelaide. With India winning the series opener by 295 runs, the onus was on the likes of Labuschagne and Steve Smith to fix the batting woes of the home team. Labuschagne was under more pressure, having not found a way to score despite spending plenty of time in the middle.
His 2 off 52 balls in the first innings at Perth was a knock of immense struggle before he fell to the brilliance of Jasprit Bumrah for a second successive leg before dismissal in the game.
Shutting the outside noise surrounding his place in the team, Labuschagne worked on "moving into the ball" better day and night as part his course correction for the second Test. His self devised method produced results as he a found a way to score despite the extreme pressure exerted by Bumrah and Co in the pink ball Test.
"At the end of the Perth Test, I knew I wasn't moving into the ball well," Labuschagne told cricket.com.au. "There were a lot of things I didn't like about how I played.
"The positives I took out of it was (despite) my technique and how I was playing, I managed to last (nearly) 60 balls out in the middle. For me, I took a lot out of my ability to find a way.
"It took all week really to try and work on different things, find out if that worked, and keep filtering through until I found out what I needed to," he said.
The right-hander delved deeper into the minor adjustments he made in the run up to the Adelaide Test.
"The 10 days off was about trying to reconnect moving into the ball, lining the ball up nicely and finding out where I was missing the link there.
"I was hitting day after day for nine days straight, just finding a way to get back to where I wanted to be.
"That was the journey I started on Tuesday and I wanted to make sure that when I got here in Adelaide that I was able to be in a position to trust it and go out and play," he said.
He also focused on changing his pre-ball routine.
"The things I changed were more pre-ball. It was my pre-ball set-up and getting a better alignment there, getting my head pushing more forward. They were all things before my trigger.
"I've batted so many different ways over the last four or five years so for me it was about which way I want to get back to – and reconnecting that with my new stance.
"It wasn't as difficult as it may sound, but it was just for me to find out, 'Okay I'm going to do this trigger, I'm going to set up like this and lining the ball up really well and get myself in a really good position'," he added.
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