England Delay Squad Reveal for Upcoming T20 Fixture as Conditions Force Inside Practice
The English side's training sessions for a hot, dry T20 World Cup in India in the coming month brought them on midweek to a cool, drizzly New Zealand's largest city, where they were forced to conduct the last training session ahead of their third game against the Kiwis inside. It is not always obvious what purpose these two-team contests fulfill, 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: Starting Batsman to Lower Down
The cricketer says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the kind of line often repeated even by players who have already reached the pinnacle of their game, in his case it is undeniably true. After building his name as a frontline hitter, mostly as an opener, Banton now occupies a totally new role, coming in at five or six. “There weren’t really 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 the summer, the vast majority of Banton’s over 160 senior T20 innings had been as an starting batsman, a further portion at third position and the remaining handful – but for seven balls at No 7 in a domestic T20 game previously – at fourth place. If the team plan to keep him in this altered role he needs every possible opportunity to become accustomed to it, and he has figured out a key point: “Playing down the order,” he concluded, “is a lot harder than opening.”
Mixed Results in the Tour
The player noted that “there’s going to be times where it comes off and it looks great and on other occasions where it doesn’t”, and the first two games of the winter in the host nation have seen both outcomes. In the opener, he faced nine balls and made nine runs before getting out to long-on; in the next game, he played a dozen balls, scored 29, and finished not out.
Reflections on Return and Development
The current series has seen Banton return to the country in which he first played for his country in November 2019. Since then, he moved away of the side, made a brief return in recently and then passed more than three years in the wilderness before returning for the new captain's initial match as England captain. “On the flight over, it was strange,” he said. “It was six years ago 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 got dropped from England was a difficult phase for me. I had a two- to three-year period where I was working myself out.”
Backing from Team Management
Currently, he has been assigned something new to work out. Banton is grateful to have been given another chance, and also for Brendon McCullum’s skill to make him comfortable while he works out how best to grasp it. “Baz came up to me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Go out and express yourself.’ It’s nice to have that freedom,” Banton said. “I realize it’s just a brief comment from the staff, but it gives me the support that if it doesn't work, it’s not a disaster. It’s something so minor but for me it’s, ‘Alright, I’ve got the approval from the head coach and I can go out and do it.’”
Shift in Location and Squad Decisions
Following the initial matches of the contest at the South Island ground, a stadium with expansive playing area, the visitors finish the series on Thursday at Eden Park, a dual-purpose rugby and cricket ground where the straight boundary at a short distance is among the most compact in the sport. With changeable conditions and an unfamiliar venue they have abandoned their usual practice of announcing their team ahead of time while they work out if their ideal XI here will be the same as the side that started both previous games.
Upcoming Changes for ODI Series
On Friday, they move to Mount Maunganui and shift attention to ODIs, with a somewhat changed team: three players drop out, while four others come in. Most newcomers arrived in Auckland on Wednesday but the scheduling of the bowler's Test match buildup means he will arrive later, travelling with Mark Wood and Josh Tongue, two seamers who are also preparing for the Tests in Australia but are excluded from the limited-overs team. Consequently Archer will be absent for the opening game at the venue, the stadium where he was subjected to abuse on his sole prior visit, in a few years back.