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The English side's training sessions for a hot, dry T20 World Cup in the subcontinent in the coming month brought them on Wednesday to a chilly, rainy Auckland, where they were forced to conduct the last practice run ahead of their third game against New Zealand inside. It is not always obvious what purpose these two-team contests serve, what valuable insights could possibly be learned – but on this occasion, for at least a squad member, that is no concern.

The Batter's New Role: From Opener to Lower Down

The cricketer says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the type of statement often repeated even by athletes who have already reached the pinnacle of their game, in his case it is certainly accurate. After building his name as a frontline hitter, 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. “I just got brought me back into the team and told, ‘You’re going to bat in the middle order now.’”

Before his recall in the summer, the vast majority of Banton’s over 160 professional T20 appearances had been as an opener, another 8% at No3 and the remaining handful – but for seven balls at No 7 in a T20 Blast game previously – at No 4. If the team plan to retain him in this new position he requires every possible opportunity to get used to it, and he has figured out one thing: “Batting in the middle order,” he surmised, “is a lot harder than starting the innings.”

Mixed Results in the Tour

Banton said that “there’s going to be times where it comes off and it appears brilliant and other times where it fails”, and the initial matches of the tour in the host nation have featured both outcomes. In the first, he faced a few deliveries and made nine runs before holing out to long-on; in the next game, he played 12 deliveries, scored 29, and finished not out.

Thoughts on Comeback and Growth

This tour has witnessed Banton return to the country in which he first played for his country in late 2019. Since then, he drifted back out of the team, made a brief return in 2022 and then passed more than three years in the wilderness before coming back for the new captain's first T20 as skipper. “During the journey, it was weird,” he said. “Time has passed when I started internationally. It feels like a lot has happened in that period. I've discovered a lot about me. The period after I was left out from the national team was a tough time for me. I had a two- to three-year period where I was finding my way.”

Support from Team Management

Currently, he has been given something new to work out. Banton is grateful to have been given another chance, and also for the coach's skill to make him comfortable while he works out how best to seize the opportunity. “The coach came up to me before [Monday’s second T20] and said, ‘Head out and play your natural game.’ It’s nice to have that freedom,” Banton said. “I realize it’s just a brief comment someone says, but it provides the backing that if it doesn't work, it’s not a disaster. It’s something so small but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the approval from the manager and I can go out and do it.’”

Venue Change and Squad Decisions

After playing the initial matches of the contest at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a venue with unusually long boundaries, the visitors complete it on Thursday at Eden Park, a dual-purpose sports facility where the field edge at 55m is among the most compact in the sport. With changeable conditions and an new location they have abandoned their usual practice of announcing their team ahead of time while they work out if their ideal XI for this match will be the same as the side that began both previous games.

Upcoming Changes for One-Day Matches

On Friday, they move to Mount Maunganui and turn focus to ODIs, with a slightly amended team: Jordan Cox, Zak Crawley and Phil Salt are omitted, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith join the squad. Three of those players landed in Auckland on the same day but the timing of the bowler's Test match buildup implies he will follow later, flying with two fellow bowlers, fast bowlers who are also building towards the longer format in the away series but are excluded from the white-ball squad. Consequently he will be absent for the first match at the venue, the stadium where he was racially abused on his sole prior visit, in 2019.