🔗 Share this article

The English side's preparations for a hot, dry T20 World Cup in India in the coming month led them on Wednesday to a chilly, rainy Auckland, where they were forced to hold the final training session ahead of their third game against the Kiwis indoors. It is not always obvious what role these two-team contests serve, what useful lessons could possibly be learned – but on this occasion, for at least one of the players, that is no concern.

Tom Banton's Changed Position: From Opener 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 game, in his case it is certainly accurate. After forging his reputation as a frontline hitter, mostly as an starting player, Banton suddenly finds himself a completely unfamiliar position, batting at five or six. “I didn't have too many conversations,” he said. “They simply brought me back into the team and told, ‘Your role will be in the middle order now.’”

Before his recall in June, 87% of Banton’s 162 senior T20 innings had been as an starting batsman, a further portion at No3 and the remaining handful – but for seven balls at No 7 in a T20 Blast game previously – at No 4. If England plan to retain him in this altered role he needs every possible opportunity to become accustomed to it, and he has already worked out one thing: “Batting in the middle order,” he surmised, “is a much tougher than starting the innings.”

Mixed Results in New Zealand

Banton said that “there’s going to be times where it works well and it looks great and on other occasions where it fails”, and the first two games of the tour in New Zealand have featured both outcomes. In the opener, he faced nine balls and made nine runs before holing out to long-on; in the second, he played 12 deliveries, hit runs, and ended the innings unbeaten.

Thoughts on Return and Development

This tour has seen 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 coming back for Harry Brook’s initial match as skipper. “During the journey, it was strange,” he said. “Time has passed when I made my debut. It feels like a lot has occurred in that time. I’ve learned a lot about myself. The few years after I was left out from England was a tough time for me. I had a two- to three-year stretch where I was working myself out.”

Backing from Team Management

Currently, he has been given a fresh challenge to tackle. Banton is thankful to have been given another chance, and also for Brendon McCullum’s ability to make him comfortable while he figures out how best to grasp it. “Baz came up to me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Go out and play your natural game.’ It’s nice to have that freedom,” Banton said. “I know it’s just a brief comment someone says, but it gives me the support that if it doesn't work, it’s not a disaster. It is so small but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the approval from the head coach and I can step up and perform.’”

Shift in Location and Team Selection

After playing the first two games of the series at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a stadium with unusually long boundaries, England finish the series on Thursday at the Auckland arena, a dual-purpose rugby and cricket ground where the field edge at a short distance is among the most compact in the sport. With changeable conditions and an unfamiliar venue they have dropped their usual practice of announcing their lineup two days in advance while they work out if their preferred team for this match will be the same as the one that started both previous games.

Squad Adjustments for One-Day Matches

On Friday, they travel to Mount Maunganui and shift attention to one-day internationals, with a slightly amended squad: three players are omitted, while four others join the squad. Most newcomers arrived in Auckland on the same day but the scheduling of the bowler's Test match buildup implies he will arrive two days later, flying with Mark Wood and Josh Tongue, two seamers who are also building towards the longer format in the away series but are excluded from the limited-overs team. Consequently Archer will miss the opening game at Bay Oval, the ground where he was racially abused on his sole prior visit, in a few years back.