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England's training sessions for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in the subcontinent in February led them on Wednesday to a chilly, rainy Auckland, where they were compelled to conduct the final practice run before their third game against the Kiwis inside. It is not always obvious what role these two-team contests serve, what useful lessons could possibly be learned – but on this instance, for at least a squad member, that is not an issue.

The Batter's Changed Position: Starting Batsman to Lower Down

The cricketer says he is “continuing to develop”, and if it is the kind of line regularly trotted out even by players who have already reached the peak of their game, in his situation it is certainly accurate. After building his name as a frontline hitter, mostly as an starting player, Banton suddenly finds himself a completely unfamiliar role, coming in at the middle order. “There weren’t really too many conversations,” he said. “I just got brought me back into the team and told, ‘Your role will be in the middle order now.’”

Before his recall in June, the vast majority of Banton’s over 160 professional T20 appearances had been as an opener, another 8% at third position and the remaining handful – but for a brief stint at No 7 in a T20 Blast game eight years ago – at No 4. If the team plan to keep him in this altered role he needs every possible opportunity to become accustomed to it, and he has already worked out a key point: “Batting in the middle order,” he concluded, “is a much tougher than opening.”

Mixed Results in the Tour

Banton said that “sometimes where it comes off and it looks great and on other occasions where it fails”, and the first two games of the tour in New Zealand have featured one of each. In the first, he faced a few deliveries and scored nine runs before holing out to the deep fielder; in the second, he played 12 deliveries, hit runs, and finished not out.

Thoughts on Return and Development

This tour has witnessed Banton come back to the country in which he made his international debut in November 2019. Since then, he drifted back out of the team, made a brief return in recently and then passed more than three years in the wilderness before coming back for the new captain's first T20 as skipper. “On the flight over, it was weird,” he said. “Time has passed when I started internationally. Seems a lot has occurred in that time. 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.”

Backing from Coaching Staff

And now, he has been given something new to tackle. Banton is grateful to have been given another chance, and also for the coach's ability to put him at ease while he figures out how best to grasp it. “Baz came up to me before [Monday’s second T20] and said, ‘Head out and express yourself.’ It's reassuring to have that liberty,” Banton said. “I realize it’s only a small thing someone says, but it provides the backing that if it doesn’t come off, it’s not a disaster. It is so small but for me it’s, ‘Alright, I’ve got the backing from the head coach and I can go out and perform.’”

Venue Change and Team Selection

Following the first two games of the series at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a venue with expansive playing area, the visitors finish the series on the next day at the Auckland arena, a dual-purpose sports facility where the straight boundary at a short distance is among the most compact in the sport. With changeable conditions and an unfamiliar venue they have abandoned their recent habit of announcing their team ahead of time while they work out if their ideal XI here will be the identical as the one that started the earlier fixtures.

Upcoming Changes for One-Day Matches

Next, they travel to Mount Maunganui and turn focus to one-day internationals, with a somewhat changed team: three players drop out, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith come in. Three of those players arrived in the city on the same day but the scheduling of Archer’s Ashes preparations means he will follow later, travelling with two fellow bowlers, fast bowlers who are also preparing for the Tests in Australia but are not in the limited-overs team. As a result he will be absent for the opening game at the venue, the ground where he was racially abused on his sole prior visit, in 2019.