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The English side's training sessions for a hot, dry T20 World Cup in India in February led them on Wednesday to a cool, drizzly New Zealand's largest city, where they were compelled to conduct the final training session ahead of their third game against the Kiwis indoors. It is not always obvious what purpose these bilateral series fulfill, what valuable insights could possibly be learned – but on this instance, for at least one of the players, that is no concern.

The Batter's New Role: From Opener 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 already reached the pinnacle of their game, in his case it is certainly accurate. After building his name as a top-order batter, mostly as an starting player, Banton now occupies a totally new role, coming in at the middle order. “There weren’t really too many discussions,” he said. “I just got brought me back into the team and informed me, ‘You’re going to bat in the middle order now.’”

Before his recall in the summer, the vast majority of Banton’s over 160 senior T20 innings had been as an opener, a further portion at No3 and the remaining handful – but for a brief stint at seventh spot in a domestic T20 game previously – at fourth place. If the team plan to keep him in this new position he needs every chance to get used to it, and he has already worked out a key point: “Playing down the order,” he concluded, “is a much tougher than starting the innings.”

Mixed Results in the Tour

The player noted that “there’s going to be times where it comes off and it appears brilliant and other times where it doesn’t”, and the first two games of the winter in New Zealand have seen both outcomes. In the first, he faced a few deliveries and made a low score before holing out to the deep fielder; in the second, he played a dozen balls, hit runs, and ended the innings unbeaten.

Reflections on Return and Growth

This tour has witnessed Banton come back to the country in which he first played for his country in late 2019. Since then, he moved away of the team, made a brief return in recently and then passed more than three years in the sidelines before coming back for Harry Brook’s first T20 as skipper. “During the journey, it was weird,” he said. “It was six years ago when I started internationally. Seems a lot has occurred in that time. I've discovered a lot about me. The few years after I got dropped from the national team was a tough time for me. I had a two- to three-year stretch where I was working myself out.”

Backing from Team Management

And now, he has been assigned a fresh challenge to tackle. Banton is grateful to have been given another chance, and also for Brendon McCullum’s skill to put him at ease while he figures out how best to grasp it. “Baz approached me before [Monday’s second T20] and said, ‘Go out and express yourself.’ It’s nice to have that freedom,” Banton said. “I know it’s just a brief comment from the staff, but it gives me the support that if it doesn’t come off, it’s not the end of the world. It is so small but for me it’s, ‘Alright, I’ve got the backing from the manager and I can go out and do it.’”

Venue Change and Team Selection

Following the initial matches of the contest at the South Island ground, a stadium with unusually long boundaries, the visitors complete it on the next day at the Auckland arena, a multi-use sports facility where the field edge at 55m is among the most compact in the sport. With uncertain weather and an unfamiliar venue they have abandoned their usual practice of revealing their team ahead of time while they determine if their preferred team here will be the same as the side that started both previous games.

Upcoming Changes for One-Day Matches

On Friday, they travel to Mount Maunganui and turn focus to one-day internationals, with a slightly amended team: Jordan Cox, Zak Crawley and Phil Salt drop out, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith join the squad. Three of those players landed in the city on Wednesday but the timing of Archer’s Ashes preparations means he will follow later, travelling with two fellow bowlers, fast bowlers who are also building towards the longer format in Australia but are excluded from the limited-overs team. As a result Archer will be absent for the first match at Bay Oval, the ground where he was racially abused on his only previous appearance, in 2019.