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The English side's preparations for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in India in the coming month brought them on midweek to a cool, drizzly Auckland, where they were compelled to conduct the final practice run before their next match 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 one of the players, that is not an issue.

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

The cricketer says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the kind of line regularly trotted out even by players who have long since scaled the peak of their sport, in his case 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, coming in at five or six. “I didn't have too many conversations,” he said. “They simply brought me back into the team and told, ‘You’re going to bat in the middle order now.’”

Prior to returning in June, 87% of Banton’s 162 professional T20 appearances had been as an starting batsman, another 8% at No3 and the remaining handful – but for a brief stint at seventh spot in a T20 Blast game previously – at No 4. If England plan to retain him in this altered role he requires every possible opportunity to get used to it, and he has figured out a key point: “Batting in the middle order,” he surmised, “is a much tougher than starting the innings.”

Mixed Results in New Zealand

The player noted that “sometimes where it comes off and it looks great and on other occasions where it doesn’t”, and the initial matches of the winter in New Zealand have seen both outcomes. In the opener, he lasted nine balls and scored nine runs before getting out to the deep fielder; in the next game, he faced 12 deliveries, hit runs, and ended the innings unbeaten.

Reflections on Return and Growth

This tour has seen Banton come back to the nation in which he made his international debut in late 2019. Since then, he drifted back out of the team, had a short comeback in recently and then spent a long period in the wilderness before returning for the new captain's initial match as skipper. “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 time. I’ve learned a lot about me. The few years after I got dropped from the national team was a tough time for me. I had a couple of years stretch where I was working myself out.”

Support from Team Management

Currently, he has been assigned something new to work out. Banton is grateful to have been given another chance, and also for Brendon McCullum’s skill to put him at ease while he works out how best to seize the opportunity. “Baz came up to me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Head out and express yourself.’ It’s nice to have that freedom,” Banton said. “I realize it’s just a brief comment someone says, but it gives me the support that if it doesn’t come off, it’s not the end of the world. It is so minor but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the approval from the head coach and I can go out and do it.’”

Venue Change and Squad Decisions

After playing the initial matches of the series at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a stadium with expansive playing area, the visitors finish the series on Thursday at the Auckland arena, a multi-use rugby and cricket ground where the straight boundary at 55m is among the most compact in the sport. With changeable conditions and an unfamiliar venue they have abandoned their usual practice of revealing their team ahead of time while they work out if their ideal XI for this match will be the identical as the side that started both previous games.

Squad Adjustments for One-Day Matches

Next, they travel to the coastal town and turn focus to ODIs, with a somewhat changed squad: three players are omitted, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith join the squad. Three of those players arrived in Auckland on the same day but the scheduling of Archer’s Test match buildup implies he will arrive two days later, travelling with two fellow bowlers, two seamers who are also building towards the longer format in the away series but are not in the white-ball squad. Consequently he will miss the first match at the venue, the stadium where he was subjected to abuse on his sole prior visit, in a few years back.