'He's lacked runs' - Australia head coach Andrew McDonald puts Marnus Labuschagne's depleting form under microscope

Australia's head coach Andrew McDonald has put Marnus Labuschagne's lean patch under the microscope. Labuschagne scored 1 and 31 across the two innings in the Test series opener in Darwin against Bangladesh. The right-handed batter has aggregated only 1655 runs in 32 Tests since 2023, averaging merely 30.09, managing a solitary hundred. It is the polar opposite to the kind of start he had to his career.

He had amassed 3071 runs at a stellar average of 59.06 in the 32 Tests he had played before that, including 10 centuries and a highest score of 215. Labuschagne holds the key No. 3 position and needs to shoulder the bulk of scoring alongside Steve Smith. 

Labuschagne was dropped from the team before the Caribbean tour last year as he was unable to aggregate runs and contribute towards the team's cause. He went back to the Sheffield Shield and One-Day Cup and smacked five hundreds for Queensland, forcing the selectors to pick him for the Ashes at home.

McDonald has made it evident that Labuschagne needs to churn out runs before he runs out of time and opportunities.

"We want runs is the bottom line," McDonald was quoted as saying by Cricinfo after the loss to Bangladesh in Darwin. "I think it was 31 he got in the second innings, and up until the point he got out, you'd sit there and say he was looking good.

"He was moving well, he's clipping off his pads, he was getting back through the ball down the ground. So it's easy for me to sit here and try to defend that, but ultimately it's 31. It's not a big score. He's lacked runs. He feels that. We feel that. We're working incredibly hard as a coaching group.

"It's one thing to talk about the player. You've got to talk coaching. We've got to get the best out of Marn as well. And we're working through that.

"I think we saw some change in the way that he played, so that's good. So some of that work that he had done feels as though it's stuck under pressure, and that's always a hard part too. You can try to make these changes, and then when you get put under extreme pressure in the middle, sometimes those changes don't hold. So it was good to see them hold up.

"But it is 31. He's disappointed of that missed opportunity. He needs some big runs."