Tom Banton admitted it feels "unnatural" to him batting in the middle-order as opposed to opening the innings, which he did successfully for Somerset before progressing through to play for England at the highest level.
Spoilt for choices at the top of the order, England team management's best option with the highly talented Banton has been to try and fit him in lower down.
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He batted at No.6 in his debut series in South Africa last winter and has struggled to adjust to the No.4 spot in the ongoing one versus Ireland, making scores of 11 & 15 in the first two games in Southampton.
"I'm not going to lie, it does feel unnatural at the moment," Cricbuzz quoted Banton as saying ahead of the third ODI on Tuesday (August 4). "I've never batted there (in the middle-order) at all. I've always seemed to be at the top of the order. In red-ball last year I batted four, five, six, and obviously, it's different."
"I've spoken to a few guys and they've told me a few things to try and take into my game. I'm getting used to it, trying to find the right tempo. A score there would probably give me a bit of confidence and that'll feel good but I'm just waiting for that at the moment."
"It's probably something I'm going to have to get used to if I'm going to [play for England]. I have been trying to work on it in the nets. It's something I've got to work on if I want to play more. I'm working quite closely with [Marcus] Trescothick which has been good - we've come up with a few things which hopefully I can try tomorrow," he added.
"It's about giving myself a chance because I know I can catch up. If I'm in for 40, 50 balls, I back myself to catch up. It's probably rotating the strike more coming in and when there is a bad ball putting it away. But I don't want to put too much pressure on myself, it's the first few times I've batted there so I'm not expecting too much."
With England's first-choice top-order adorned by the presence of Jason Roy, Jonny Bairstow, Joe Root and the rest of the top six enriched by skipper Eoin Morgan, Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler, even finding a regular middle-order slot is extremely difficult and Banton knows it.
A way forward could be to become an effective middle-order bat for Somerset so as to try and develop his game for the new role. But the move down for his club is something Banton isn't fully convinced over, worried that he might not enjoy the same level of success.
"It's a hard one," he said. "I love opening so I'll probably carry on doing that. It's tricky, if I do want to play I'm probably going to slide in at 6 realistically."
"It is probably the most difficult sports team in the world to get into, at the moment. Especially for me as an opener. I'm just going to try and keep scoring as many runs as possible and see where that takes me," Banton concluded.
