England's training sessions for a hot, dry T20 World Cup in India in the coming month brought them on midweek to a chilly, rainy Auckland, where they were forced to conduct the last practice run ahead of their third game against the Kiwis inside. It is not always obvious what purpose these bilateral series fulfill, what valuable insights could possibly be gained – but on this occasion, for at least a squad member, that is no concern.
The cricketer says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the type of statement often repeated even by athletes who have long since scaled the peak of their game, in his case it is certainly accurate. After forging his reputation as a top-order batter, primarily as an opener, Banton suddenly finds himself a completely unfamiliar role, batting 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.’”
Prior to returning in the summer, the vast majority of Banton’s 162 senior T20 innings had been as an opener, a further portion at third position and the rest – but for seven balls at seventh spot in a domestic T20 game eight years ago – at No 4. If the team intend to keep him in this altered role he requires every chance to become accustomed to it, and he has already worked out one thing: “Playing down the order,” he concluded, “is a much tougher than opening.”
The player noted that “there’s going to be times where it works well and it looks great and other times where it fails”, and the initial matches of the winter in the host nation have featured both outcomes. In the first, he lasted a few deliveries and made a low score before holing out to the deep fielder; in the next game, he faced 12 deliveries, scored 29, and finished not out.
The current series has seen Banton come back to the nation in which he made his international debut in November 2019. Since then, he drifted back out of the team, had a short comeback in 2022 and then passed more than three years in the wilderness before coming back for the new captain's initial match as England captain. “During the journey, it was weird,” he said. “Time has passed when I started internationally. It feels like a lot has occurred in that time. I've discovered a lot about me. The period after I was left out from the national team was a difficult phase for me. I had a two- to three-year stretch where I was working myself out.”
Currently, he has been given a fresh challenge to tackle. Banton is thankful to have been offered a return, and also for the coach's skill to make him comfortable while he works out how best to seize the opportunity. “The coach came up to me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Head out and play your natural game.’ 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 work, it’s not the end of the world. It’s something so small but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the backing from the manager and I can go out and do it.’”
After playing the initial matches of the contest at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a venue with unusually long boundaries, the visitors finish the series on Thursday at Eden Park, a multi-use sports facility where the straight boundary at a short distance is among the shortest in the world. With changeable conditions and an unfamiliar venue they have dropped their usual practice of revealing their team two days in advance while they work out if their preferred team for this match will be the identical as the side that started both previous games.
Next, they travel to the coastal town and shift attention to one-day internationals, 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 Auckland on the same day but the scheduling of Archer’s Test match buildup implies he will arrive two days later, travelling with two fellow bowlers, fast bowlers who are also building towards the longer format in Australia but are excluded from the white-ball squad. As a result he will be absent for the first match at the venue, the ground where he was racially abused on his only previous appearance, in 2019.
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