Tom Banton re-emerges at the top for England after 50-over wilderness years

Tom Banton will become the sixth man to open the batting with Ben Duckett in England‘s last 17 ODIs when he walks out against Sri Lanka in Durham on Tuesday. It is a remarkably high churn rate which reflects a turbulent period for England’s 50-over side, and Banton’s circumstances are a reminder that the set-up is fighting against a self-defeating system.

It was back in 2019 that Banton first announced himself as a future England player, and he did so through his performances in the Royal London Cup. Opening the batting with Azhar Ali, Banton scored 112, 59 and 69 in Somerset‘s three knockout games, the latter underpinning their six-wicket win over Hampshire in the tournament’s most recent Lord’s final.

Yet since lifting that trophy with Somerset as a bright-eyed 20-year-old with the world at his feet, Banton has hardly played a 50-over game. In the intervening seven years, he has played just seven List A matches, all of them ODIs. He faced 145 balls across six matches in 2020, and another 41 in a dead-rubber against India early last year, a grand total of 186 in seven years.

In the same period, he has played 50 first-class matches and an eye-watering 237 T20s for 14 different teams. It is a familiar story for any young English player in the 2020s: Banton has been involved in all six seasons of the Hundred, ruling him out of the One-Day Cup which runs alongside it, and has therefore hardly played a 50-over game.

It means that Banton will be learning on the job on Tuesday, just as Phil Salt, Jamie Smith, Zak Crawley, Rehan Ahmed and Jacob Bethell have attempted to before him over the last two years. His profile should make him a good fit – he has excelled against spin for England in T20Is, but is used to facing the new ball in franchise cricket – but his selection is essentially another punt.

There have been occasional attempts to change the structure of the English season to give 50-over cricket more prominence. Andrew Strauss’s 2022 high-performance review, for example, pitched a standalone one-day tournament at the start of the summer, with a series of first-class matches played alongside the Hundred instead.

But Strauss’s proposals were quickly thrown out by counties, alarmed by the prospect of selling a shorter fixture list to members, while last summer’s internal review only briefly considered the prospect of moving the One-Day Cup out of its current window, ultimately settling on a minor restructure to the Blast after season-long discussions produced no real consensus.

Instead, English cricket has essentially concluded that 50-over cricket is its lowest priority format, and that Banton’s cohort will have to cope with learning its nuances while playing it internationally. Even Harry Brook, the most talented English batter of his generation, took 18 innings to make his first ODI hundred – coincidentally, almost exactly two years ago in Durham.

It was telling that when Jonathan Trott was confirmed as the new England Lions coach on Monday, the ECB’s statement highlighted “a 50-over focus” during their winter programme. The Lions have played a pitiful volume of 50-over cricket in the last seven years – just seven List A matches – but must be seen as the way to help players develop in the ‘middle’ format.

Banton’s international career has been revived over the last 18 months. Brook, his captain at Under-19s level, was a strong advocate for his inclusion when he took charge of the white-ball teams last summer, and said on Monday that he “deserves an opportunity” after a long run as the spare batter in England’s ODI squad.

“He’s good on the short ball, and arguably he’s one of our best players of spin,” Brook said. “When you first come into international cricket, a lot of people say you need to be able to play the short ball and be a good player of spin, and he fits that mould really well… He’s opened pretty much his whole career in white-ball cricket, so I can’t see this being any different for him.”

He should get a good crack at making the role his own, too. Bethell looked the part when he made 91 against India at Lord’s in mid-July but has not played any cricket since after injuring the cartilage in his right knee. He is not expected to be fit for October’s ODI tri-series in Pakistan, so Banton should have an eight-match run as Duckett’s partner over the next six weeks.

That win at Lord’s felt like a watershed moment for England’s ODI team, sealing a second successive series win following their triumph in Sri Lanka in February. They remain reliant on Joe Root’s runs from No. 3, but winning always helps; in this case, it has enabled continuity of selection in most roles, which in turn has helped to grow players’ experience in the format.

Fifty-over cricket will become the priority white-ball format again over the winter, with Brendon McCullum hinting at resting some all-format players for November’s T20Is in Australia, and for players like Banton, the opportunity to pitch a case ahead of next year’s World Cup in southern Africa is clear. The only issue is a lack of muscle memory to fall back on.

Matt Roller is a senior correspondent at Cricinfo. @mroller98

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