Marnus Labuschagne was ICC’s top-ranked batter for six months, but the rankings did not reveal an overseas record unbefitting of someone of that stature, writes Sarah Waris.

In the span of two weeks, ICC’s top-ranked batter (now displaced by Joe Root just as we wrap this up) and bowler have both come under the scanner, for near-identical reasons.

India left out R Ashwin for the World Test Championship final earlier this month. Ashwin, one of the first names in an Indian XI at home, often finds himself on the bench overseas, and has played only 10 away Tests in the last four years.

His bowling average of 31.65 is a sharp dip from his average of 16.75 in India in this period, has often gone against him, and India back four seamers and Ravindra Jadeja largely based on the narrative that Ashwin’s performances drop on foreign shores.

Cricket is often called a batter’s game, where a top-order player is rarely dropped from the XI in conditions they have not excelled in. The horses-for-courses policies are usually restricted to bowling attacks, where teams shuffle and change combinations according to oppositions or pitches.

Bowlers are scrutinised more often because their struggles are visible for longer hours in a Test match as they toil through over after over. It is often a one-ball game for the batter, whose low scores only being mentioned in case of a collective failure or a defeat: they are often perceived as all-terrain conquerors.

And, that is why, while Ashwin is left to question his calibre due to a significant difference in numbers, Labuschagne is revered as a modern-day great.

A highly decorated, technically astute batter who burst onto the scene as Test cricket’s first concussion substitute four years ago, he averages 55.14 in Test cricket – but that tells only part of the story.

Labuschagne’s overseas record needs to be more

Labuschagne shot to the top of the rankings for the first time in December 2021 following a 103 and 51 during the home Ashes. He lost the ranking in July 2022, but managed to wrestle his way back after a dominating summer against the West Indies. He held on to the top spot for a little over six months, despite averaging 36.63 this year, with all but one of his seven Tests being played away from home.

He has played 39 Test matches since his debut in 2018, crossing the fifty 25 times, including 10 hundreds. The quiet early games were followed by the career-defining 2019 Ashes, when he walked out to bat as Steve Smith’s concussion substitute in the second innings at Lord’s, and ended as Australia’s second-highest run-scorer in the series.

The fairytale saga spilled over beyond the Ashes, and Labuschagne ended the year with 185, 162, 143, 50, 63 and 19 in his last four Tests that year.

From 2020 to the end of 2021, Labuschagne averaged 66.35, with one of his three tons being a knock of 215 against New Zealand. However, a deeper analysis shows a caveat in his pattern of run-scoring, with regards to his numbers in Australia and away.

Labuschagne averages 70.50 from 22 Tests on familiar home turf, but away, that number reads just over 37 from 17 matches. He has done well in Sri Lanka (49.67) and India (40.67), but not in Pakistan (34) or the UAE (20.25). In England – the only other country he has travelled to – he has made 80 in four innings since the 2019 heroics.

In Australia, Labuschagne scores nearly a fifty every alternate innings. He has converted nine of his 18 fifties into hundreds, and even the hundreds include five 150s and two double tons. Only eight times (21.6 percent) has he been dismissed for a score below 20.

Move away from Australia, and the numbers are reversed. Labuschagne has made 50 in 22.5 percent of his innings and has a score of 20 or fewer 38.71 percent of the times.

It is not to say that he has been found totally wanting in overseas conditions. He made a counter-attacking 104 on a tricky Galle surface and threatened to single-handedly thwart the Indian spinners at Nagpur with a 123-ball 49.

He was also one of the two Australia batters to reach 90 in Rawalpindi, although the wicket was later docked points for being below average for offering little contest between bat and ball; and made 63 not in 213 balls on a comparably benign Ahmedabad pitch.

Since the start of 2020, Labuschagne has been Australia’s best batter at home, with an average of 68.58. He is also their only player with more than ten scores in excess of fifty. However, moving away from the island, and the numbers paint a contrasting picture.

Among players with at least 15 innings abroad in this period, his average of 35.75 is the better than only David Warner’s among specialist batters. However, while Warner is arguably on the decline, and nearing the end of his career, 28-year-old Labuschagne is in his prime years.

A sample size of 39 Test matches, while not large, is not negligible either. While Labuschagne is yet to visit every country, he is yet to truly live up to the stature of someone who has been ranked No.1 for so long.

The ICC ranking system has also been much debated, with the T20I charts do not emphasise on strike rates, while Test lists seem to reflect combined performances across the globe, but that is a topic for another day.

As far as Labuschagne is concerned, champions have to grapple against the best, repeatedly pushing opponents to the knees at any given opportunity, and even he would admit that he has miles to go before truly earning that billing.

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