View Review: Marnus the horse and the horse whisperer

They call him the batting whisperer. “Like the horse whisperer, the horse psycholog, but then they have called me far worse over the years,” Neil D’Costa, the Indian-origin maverick batting coach of Marnus Labuschagne and the man who convinced a 13-year old Mitchell Starc to ditch wicketkeeping and pursue fast bowling instead, laughs down the phone line.
D’Costa’s life in Australia once his Anglo-Indian parents moved from Chennai is itself quite a tale but we start with the first time he met the current world no. 1 batsman. A friend, Queensland’s coach Blair Copelin, had told him to look out for this lad, Marnus: ‘bit different.”
“And so, I go to the ground during a U-19 game between Queensland and New South Wales. I see a boy appealing for lbw from deep square leg. I called up my friend, is your boy the one who is convinced that the batsman is plumb lbw from the boundary line?!”
“It sure sounds like him,” came the reply.
Just ahead of the current Ashes, Labuschagne had told the media about the influence of D’Costa on his batting. “Up to that stage I was a good player. I wouldn’t say I was a great player. I was a steady player. I was grinding my way into nothing. I was hitting a lot of balls, I was trying to do all the right things, but then I was doing so many other things wrong.” The stint with D’Costa changed him. “That’s probably the first time I learnt to play with that freedom.”
D’Costa with Marnus Labuschagne.
An intense session or two ensued in Brisbane but D’Costa left for Sydney. His phone kept ringing off the hook. “It was Marnus and he was ready to come to Sydney to work more.” But D’Costa wasn’t in the mood. “For some reason, then, I wasn’t really too keen to get into coaching at that level of players. So I kept shrugging him off, with one excuse or another.” But the teenager wouldn’t relent. “He basically clung on to me I guess! And so I said okay, but len if we are going to do this, we have to do it my way. It won’t be easy. Not that it deterred him and he came over soon.”
“I work on the physical, technical, mental, and emotional fronts – the four areas that I am interested in,” D’Costa tells The Indian Express. A full-on overhaul of Labuschagne’s mental and technical game began in earnest. “Physically he was okay but we wanted him to get a bit stronger.”
The invisible hand of Virat Kohli
The teenaged Labuschagne had a curious problem, that is hard to fathom to those of us who have only watched him in international cricket. He wasn’t fluent on the leg side. He would almost cut that side out. “There was a fear in him that he gets lbw when playing to the leg side,” D’Costa says. In Labuschagne’s words last month, “I hated getting out so much, I would do anything that was possible not to get out. That fear of getting out definitely hindered me a little bit”.
D’Costa picked out his most famous drill that he has chrened “The Virat Kohli” – where a batsman picks the ball from outside off and whips to the on side.
“Mentally I had to teach Marnus how to get the ball to the leg side. The bowlers had caught up with his reluctance and were tucking him up. He was too wary about being lbw, he would say, “I would miss and get lbw”. The Virat Kohli shot was unleashed on him!” D’Costa laughs.
“First, I had to convince him that if he doesn’t play on the leg side, he won’t score runs as he grades up. The bowlers keep getting better as you move up, and you have to find your way now. Trust me son, work it out now.” Then, the Kohli drill was unleashed. “First, it was fair-batting that whip, getting him to become very comfortable with it. Once it burns into the muscle memory, then the actual play against the balls begins. Now, can anyone say he has a weakness there?!”
D’Costa with his children.
With that shot in place, Labuschagne’s repertoire blossomed; so did his confidence. “Now he was accessing all areas in the ground; he can still go instinctively inside-out through the off side as he became so good with it while trying to avoid the leg side. And then once the leg-side play came in, he could turn the ball anywhere.”
The sugar rush
There was a culinary intervention too. “Oh! The boy loved his sugar! Heaps of sugar every time. He was willing to work so hard on his game, fitness everything but love for sugar wasn’t easy to quit.
“I told him, you can’t do it. But he says he likes it, he will work it off! l had to tell him that it wasn’t physical damage but this is not good for your brain, mate. You are out of control!”
“When you don’t eat sugar you are down in the dumps. It’s got you the throat. Best to lose it now. You wanted to know the behavioural pattern of top performers, right. They have control over their mind. And then he quit!”

Marnus also worked with a mental conditioning coach, Alan Mantle, who is associated with D’Costa. “He is the one who works on mindfulness. He worked with Marnus. It’s about developing a routine between the balls. How are you clearing it to think about the next ball. How to take one ball at a time. It could involve self-chats, whatever works, but a routine that he has worked on. He works his way to feel comfortable out there. Take every bit of information to play the most appropriate shot. We would spend hours talking about routine. He has continued to evolve,” says D’Costa.
The runs began to pile up. Marnus’s name began to spread. “If it didn’t spread, I would ensure it did,” D’Costa says. Like this one time in 2014, when he texted Justin Langer to watch out for Labuschagne as his record was under threat. In the early 90’s Langer had called over 1000 runs in a season in Kent Cricket League Premier Division. “I have got a young bloke about to break your record and he said No one will break that!” Soon, D’Costa was texting him a countdown. 300 to go, 200, 100 now .., and when the record was broken, I texted Langer, “You watch his journey now mate! And he certainly is doing it now!” D’Costa laughs.

The two continue to talk almost every day. Sometimes, it’s to remind Labuschagne to chill, focus on what good you did rather than the one ball that got him out. At times, as the case was in the first Ashes Test at Brisbane, it can be to deliver tough straight talking too. Labuschagne had got out on 72, trying to play a shot-a-ball to the spinner Jack Leach. “You were batting the way you were and you got out like that. What were you thinking?! He appreciates that straight talk, and needs someone to keep him on the path.”
Labuschagne’s test in India
One story for the road. Where it began for him, as a concussion special in Ashes. The documentary Test on Amazon Prime shows Labuschange keenly looking for the signs that Steve Smith has given up and agreed that he won’t bat. “How quickly he turned and fled on to the field!” D’Costa laughs. “He told me later that he knew he had to get out quickly lest Smith changes his mind!” Almost immediately, Joffra Archer crash-landed a bouncer on his helmet and sank Labuschagne. “But he whipped up almost in the same motion and had a look at Joffra, didn’t he?! He was ready. We had prepared so well for that series and our thinking was he would play. That’s how you prepare. Not go, mop around on a tour, and see what happens. You prepare, thinking you are going to play. I knew he was ready. His team and the cricketing world realised that after that knock.”

On phone that night, D’Costa would ask him how was Jofra? “Light Ning! The way he drawled and said Light Ning! Ha ha ha! And I could tell he enjoyed doing well against such bowling.”
Labuschagne was ranked the No.1 batsman in the world but hasn’t yet been seen on turners. The Pakan Test tour is done and dusted and Labuschagne didn’t do as well as he would have liked on the flat tracks. But he still hasn’t played on turners in India, so, how will he go here next year?
“We have to wait and see, don’t we? I believe he has the game, he knows he has the game, but then until that happens, we have to wait,” D’Costa says. Australia are coming to India for a Test tour in early 2023 and it will be the final stamp on Labuschagne’s standing in world cricket. R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, and the pitches await. “He will be alright, don’t you worry,” says D’Costa and laughs.