The best hasn’t been seen from Australian batter Marnus Labuschagne who has been the mainstay of Australian batting in the middle-order. The recent Test outings have shown a dip in Labuschagne's form, garnering some sort of opprobrium towards his side. However, Australian head coach Andrew McDonald didn’t seem concerned with Labuschagne’s flawed batting. 

"I don't think there's any great concern from our point of view, in terms of we want the top six or seven batters to be performing as a collective," McDonald said while talking to the reporters.

"So, I think, while the rest are performing around that and you're winning games of cricket, the concern levels are fractionally lower. Can he perform better? No doubt about that. Does he know that? He knows that. Is he working on it? Yes,” he said. 

Labuschagne’s score in the first Test against New Zealand was (1) and (2) in first and second innings respectively. However, Australia won the first game by (172) runs with the collective efforts from bowlers and batters. About Labuschagne, McDonald feels that there are going to be ebbs and flows. 

"Over time there's going to be some ebbs and flows in your career. And I thought in the second innings, and this is really hard to sort of quantify, but I thought the intent and the energy he brought to the crease, and that was only two runs so I don't want to get carried away with two runs, but that's what we see when he's at his best," he said.

"We saw that at Sydney (against Pakistan) in the second innings, we saw that at Manchester (in last year's Ashes) where he had the intent to score and put it back on the bowler," McDonald noted.

"Sometimes the conditions don't allow that, and you have to absorb a little bit more. But sometimes he under-values, even in difficult conditions, when he's showing that intent how much pressure he can put back on to the bowling unit of the opponent," said McDonald.