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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 Wednesday to a cool, drizzly New Zealand's largest city, where they were forced to conduct the last practice run ahead of their next match against New Zealand inside. It is not always obvious what purpose these bilateral series serve, 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 Changed Position: From Opener to Middle Order

The cricketer says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the kind of line often repeated even by athletes who have already reached the peak of their sport, in his case it is undeniably true. After building his name as a frontline hitter, mostly as an opener, Banton suddenly finds himself a totally new position, coming in at five or six. “I didn't have too many conversations,” he said. “I just got brought me back into the squad and informed me, ‘You’re going to bat in the lower batting lineup now.’”

Before his recall in June, 87% of Banton’s 162 senior T20 innings had been as an opener, another 8% at No3 and the remaining handful – but for a brief stint at seventh spot in a domestic T20 game eight years ago – at fourth place. If the team plan to retain him in this altered role he requires every chance to get used to it, and he has figured out one thing: “Batting in the middle order,” he concluded, “is a lot harder than opening.”

Varied Performances in the Tour

Banton said that “there’s going to be times where it comes off and it looks great and on other occasions where it fails”, and the initial matches of the winter in the host nation have seen both outcomes. In the first, he lasted nine balls and made a low score before holing out to long-on; in the next game, he faced a dozen balls, hit runs, and finished not out.

Reflections on Return and Development

This tour has seen Banton return to the nation 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 a long period in the wilderness before coming back for the new captain's initial match as England captain. “On the flight over, it was weird,” he said. “It was six years ago when I started internationally. Seems a lot has occurred in that period. I've discovered a lot about me. The few years after I was left out from England was a tough time for me. I had a couple of years stretch where I was finding my way.”

Support from Coaching Staff

And now, he has been assigned something new to work out. Banton is thankful to have been offered a return, and also for Brendon McCullum’s ability to make him comfortable while he works out how best to grasp it. “Baz came up to me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Head out and express yourself.’ It's reassuring to have that freedom,” 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 the end of the world. It’s something so minor but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the backing from the head coach and I can go out and perform.’”

Shift in Location and Team Selection

After playing the initial matches of the contest at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a stadium with unusually long boundaries, England complete it on the next day at the Auckland arena, a multi-use sports facility where the field edge at 55m is among the shortest in the sport. With uncertain weather and an new location they have dropped their usual practice of revealing their team two days in advance while they determine if their preferred team for this match will be the identical as the side that began 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 somewhat changed 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 arrived in Auckland on Wednesday but the timing of Archer’s Ashes preparations implies he will arrive later, flying with Mark Wood and Josh Tongue, fast bowlers who are also building towards the Tests in Australia but are not in the white-ball squad. Consequently he will miss the opening game at the venue, the stadium where he was racially abused on his only previous appearance, in a few years back.