England Postpone Team Announcement for Upcoming Twenty20 Fixture as Conditions Compel Inside Training

The English side's preparations for a hot, dry T20 World Cup in India in the coming month brought them on Wednesday to a cool, drizzly Auckland, where they were compelled to hold the last practice run ahead of their next match against the Kiwis indoors. It is not always obvious what purpose these two-team contests serve, what useful lessons could possibly be gained – but on this occasion, for at least a squad member, that is not an issue.

The Batter's New Role: Starting Batsman to Lower Down

The cricketer says he is “continuing to develop”, and if it is the type of statement regularly trotted out even by players who have long since scaled the peak of their game, in his case it is undeniably true. After forging his reputation as a top-order batter, mostly as an opener, Banton now occupies a totally new role, coming in at the middle order. “I didn't have too many conversations,” he said. “They simply brought me back into the squad and told, ‘You’re going to bat in the middle order now.’”

Before his recall in the summer, the vast majority of Banton’s 162 professional T20 appearances had been as an opener, another 8% at third position and the remaining handful – but for seven balls at No 7 in a domestic T20 game eight years ago – at fourth place. If England intend to retain him in this new position he needs every possible opportunity to become accustomed to it, and he has figured out a key point: “Playing down the order,” he surmised, “is a much tougher than starting the innings.”

Varied Performances in the Tour

Banton said that “there’s going to be times where it works well and it appears brilliant and on other occasions where it doesn’t”, and the initial matches of the winter in the host nation have seen both outcomes. In the opener, he lasted nine balls and scored nine runs before getting out to long-on; in the second, he played a dozen balls, hit runs, and ended the innings not out.

Thoughts on Return and Development

The current series has witnessed Banton come back to the country in which he first played for his country in November 2019. After that, he moved away of the team, made a brief return in recently and then passed a long period in the sidelines before coming back for the new captain's first T20 as England captain. “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 was left out from the national team was a difficult phase for me. I had a couple of years stretch where I was finding my way.”

Support from Coaching Staff

Currently, he has been assigned a fresh challenge to tackle. Banton is grateful to have been offered a return, and also for Brendon McCullum’s ability to make him comfortable while he figures out how best to grasp it. “Baz approached me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Go out and express yourself.’ 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 come off, it’s not a disaster. It is so minor but for me it’s, ‘Alright, I’ve got the approval from the manager and I can go out and do it.’”

Venue Change and Squad Decisions

After playing the initial matches of the contest at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a stadium with unusually long boundaries, the visitors complete it on Thursday at Eden Park, a dual-purpose sports facility where the straight boundary at 55m 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 ahead of time while they determine if their ideal XI here will be the same as the one that started both previous games.

Squad Adjustments for ODI Series

Next, they travel to the coastal town and turn focus to ODIs, with a slightly amended squad: Jordan Cox, Zak Crawley and Phil Salt are omitted, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith join the squad. Most newcomers arrived in the city on the same day but the scheduling of Archer’s Test match buildup means he will follow two days later, flying with Mark Wood and Josh Tongue, fast bowlers who are also preparing for the Tests in Australia but are not in the limited-overs team. As a result he will miss the first match at Bay Oval, the stadium where he was racially abused on his sole prior visit, in 2019.