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The English side's preparations for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in India in the coming month led them on midweek to a cool, drizzly New Zealand's largest city, where they were compelled to conduct the final practice run ahead of their next match against New Zealand indoors. It is not always obvious what role these two-team contests serve, what valuable insights could possibly be gained – 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 “still learning now”, and if it is the kind of line regularly trotted out even by athletes who have long since scaled the peak of their game, in his situation it is certainly accurate. After building his name as a frontline hitter, mostly as an starting player, Banton now occupies a completely unfamiliar role, coming in at the middle order. “I didn't have 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 June, the vast majority of Banton’s 162 senior T20 innings had been as an opener, a further portion at No3 and the remaining handful – but for seven balls at No 7 in a domestic T20 game previously – at No 4. If the team plan to retain him in this altered role he requires every possible opportunity to become accustomed to it, and he has figured out one thing: “Batting in the middle order,” he surmised, “is a lot harder than opening.”

Mixed Results in New Zealand

Banton said that “sometimes where it comes off and it looks great and other times where it doesn’t”, and the first two games of the tour in New Zealand have seen both outcomes. In the first, he lasted nine balls and made a low score before getting out to long-on; in the next game, he faced 12 deliveries, hit runs, and finished unbeaten.

Thoughts on Comeback and Growth

This tour has seen Banton come back to the country in which he made his international debut in late 2019. After that, he moved away of the side, made a brief return in recently and then passed a long period in the wilderness before coming back for Harry Brook’s first T20 as skipper. “On the flight over, it was strange,” he said. “Time has passed when I made my debut. Seems a lot has happened in that time. I've discovered a lot about me. The period after I got dropped from the national team was a difficult phase for me. I had a couple of years stretch where I was working myself out.”

Support from Team Management

And now, he has been assigned something new to tackle. Banton is thankful to have been given another chance, and also for Brendon McCullum’s ability to put him at ease while he figures out how best to grasp it. “Baz came up to me before [Monday’s second T20] and said, ‘Head out and play your natural game.’ It's reassuring to have that liberty,” Banton said. “I realize it’s only a small thing from the staff, 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 approval from the manager and I can step up and perform.’”

Venue Change and Squad Decisions

Following the initial matches of the series at the South Island ground, a stadium with unusually long boundaries, the visitors finish the series on Thursday at Eden Park, a dual-purpose sports facility where the straight boundary at 55m is among the shortest in the sport. With uncertain weather and an unfamiliar venue they have dropped their usual practice of revealing their lineup ahead of time while they work out if their ideal XI for this match will be the identical as the one that started both previous games.

Squad Adjustments for One-Day Matches

On Friday, they move to the coastal town and shift attention to one-day internationals, with a slightly amended team: three players drop out, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith come in. Three of those players arrived in the city on the same day but the scheduling of Archer’s Test match buildup means he will follow later, travelling with Mark Wood and Josh Tongue, two seamers who are also preparing for the longer format in the away series but are excluded from the limited-overs team. As a result he will be absent for the opening game at Bay Oval, the ground where he was racially abused on his only previous appearance, in 2019.