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England's training sessions for a hot, dry T20 World Cup in the subcontinent in February led them on midweek to a chilly, rainy New Zealand's largest city, where they were forced to conduct the final practice run before their third game against the Kiwis indoors. The purpose isn't always clear what role these bilateral series serve, what useful lessons could possibly be learned – but on this instance, for at least a squad member, that is no concern.

The Batter's New Role: Starting Batsman to Middle Order

The cricketer says he is “continuing to develop”, and if it is the type of statement regularly trotted out even by athletes who have long since scaled the peak of their sport, in his situation it is certainly accurate. After building his name as a top-order batter, primarily as an opener, Banton suddenly finds himself a completely unfamiliar role, batting at five or six. “There weren’t really too many conversations,” he said. “They simply brought me back into the team and informed me, ‘You’re going to bat in the lower batting lineup now.’”

Before his recall in the summer, the vast majority of Banton’s over 160 professional T20 appearances had been as an starting batsman, another 8% at third position and the remaining handful – but for seven balls at seventh spot in a T20 Blast game eight years ago – at fourth place. If England plan to retain him in this new position he needs every possible opportunity to get used to it, and he has already worked out one thing: “Playing down the order,” he surmised, “is a much tougher than starting the innings.”

Mixed Results in New Zealand

The player noted that “there’s going to be times where it works well and it appears brilliant and other times where it fails”, and the first two games of the tour in New Zealand have seen one of each. In the first, he faced nine balls and made a low score before getting out to the deep fielder; in the next game, he faced a dozen balls, scored 29, and ended the innings unbeaten.

Reflections on Return and Growth

The current series has witnessed Banton come back to the nation in which he first played for his country in November 2019. Since then, he moved away of the team, had a short comeback in recently and then spent more than three years in the sidelines before returning for Harry Brook’s first T20 as England captain. “During the journey, it was strange,” he said. “It was six years ago when I made my debut. Seems a lot has happened in that period. I've discovered a lot about me. The period after I got dropped from the national team was a difficult phase for me. I had a two- to three-year stretch where I was working myself out.”

Support from Coaching Staff

And now, he has been given a fresh challenge to tackle. Banton is thankful to have been given another chance, and also for the coach's skill to make him comfortable while he works out how best to grasp it. “The coach came up to me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Head out and play your natural game.’ It’s nice to have that liberty,” Banton said. “I know it’s just a brief comment someone says, but it gives me the backing that if it doesn’t come off, it’s not the end of the world. It’s something so small but for me it’s, ‘Alright, I’ve got the backing from the manager and I can step up and perform.’”

Venue Change and Team Selection

Following the first two games of the contest at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a venue with unusually long boundaries, England finish the series on the next day at the Auckland arena, a dual-purpose sports facility where the field edge at a short distance is among the most compact in the sport. With changeable conditions and an new location they have dropped their recent habit of revealing their team two days in advance while they determine if their ideal XI for this match will be the same as the side that started both previous games.

Squad Adjustments for ODI Series

On Friday, they move to Mount Maunganui and turn focus to one-day internationals, with a slightly amended team: three players are omitted, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith join the squad. Most newcomers arrived in the city on Wednesday but the scheduling of Archer’s Ashes preparations means he will arrive later, flying with two fellow bowlers, two seamers who are also preparing for the Tests in the away series but are excluded from the white-ball squad. Consequently Archer will be absent for the opening game at Bay Oval, the ground where he was racially abused on his only previous appearance, in a few years back.