Marnus Labuschagne became Test cricket's first concussion substitute and seized it
On 18 August 2019, Steve Smith was ruled out of a Lord's Ashes Test after being hit on the head the day before. Under a brand-new rule, Australia sent in a replacement: Marnus Labuschagne, the first concussion substitute in Test history. By the end of that year he had scored more Test runs than anyone else.
Labuschagne was born in 1994 in Klerksdorp, South Africa, and moved to Australia at ten when his father found work in mining. Afrikaans was his first language; English fluency came only once the family had relocated, and he went to Brisbane State High School. One quirky detail from his teens: in November 2010 he worked at the Gabba as an infrared Hot Spot camera operator for television and watched Peter Siddle take an Ashes hat-trick on his birthday.
He came up through every Queensland junior team and spent English summers in club cricket. In 2014 he made 1,049 runs for Sandwich Town, breaking a Kent Premier League record held by future Australia coach Justin Langer. That same year he debuted in first-class cricket, and in 2017 he earned a strange distinction: the first fielder penalised under a new law against deceiving batters, after he dived, missed the ball and pretended to throw it anyway, costing his side five runs.
His Test start was rocky. He made a two-ball duck on debut against Pakistan in October 2018, and his promotion to number three against India soon afterward was heavily criticised. A prolific stint at Glamorgan in 2019 turned things round: his debut County Championship summer brought 1,114 runs, with a top score of 182 that was then his best. The concussion call-up followed, and during 2019 he climbed 106 places to fourth in the world Test rankings.
The honours piled up. In early 2020 he was named the ICC's emerging men's cricketer of the year, Australia's Test player of the year and one of Wisden's five Cricketers of the Year, and he later reached number one in the Test batting rankings. He was part of the Australian sides that won both the World Test Championship and the one-day World Cup in 2023, and in 2024 he became Queensland captain.
Source: Marnus Labuschagne
