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England's training sessions for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in the subcontinent in the coming month brought them on Wednesday to a cool, drizzly New Zealand's largest city, where they were forced to conduct the final training session before their next match against New Zealand indoors. The purpose isn't always clear what role these bilateral series fulfill, what valuable insights could possibly be gained – but on this instance, for at least one of the players, that is not an issue.

Tom Banton's New Role: Starting Batsman to Middle Order

Tom Banton says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the kind of line regularly trotted out even by athletes who have long since scaled the pinnacle of their sport, in his case it is certainly accurate. After building his name as a frontline hitter, primarily as an opener, Banton suddenly finds himself a totally new position, batting at five or six. “There weren’t really too many conversations,” he said. “They simply brought me back into the team and informed me, ‘You’re going to bat in the lower batting lineup now.’”

Before his recall in the summer, 87% of Banton’s over 160 professional T20 appearances had been as an opener, a further portion at No3 and the remaining handful – but for seven balls at seventh spot in a domestic T20 game previously – at No 4. If England plan to keep him in this altered role he needs every chance to get used to it, and he has already worked out one thing: “Playing down the order,” he surmised, “is a lot harder than starting the innings.”

Mixed Results in the Tour

The player noted that “sometimes where it comes off and it looks great and other times where it doesn’t”, and the initial matches of the winter in the host nation have seen one of each. In the first, he lasted nine balls and made nine runs before getting out to long-on; in the next game, he played a dozen balls, scored 29, and ended the innings not out.

Thoughts on Comeback and Growth

This tour has witnessed Banton return to the nation in which he first played for his country in November 2019. After that, he moved away of the team, made a brief return in 2022 and then spent more than three years in the sidelines before coming back for Harry Brook’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 period. I’ve learned a lot about myself. The few years after I was left out from England was a difficult phase for me. I had a couple of years stretch where I was finding my way.”

Support from Coaching Staff

And now, he has been assigned a fresh challenge to work out. Banton is thankful to have been given another chance, and also for Brendon McCullum’s skill to put him at ease while he works out how best to seize the opportunity. “The coach came up to me before [Monday’s second T20] and said, ‘Head out and express yourself.’ It’s nice to have that liberty,” Banton said. “I know it’s just a brief comment someone says, but it gives me the backing that if it doesn't work, it’s not the end of the world. It is so small but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the backing from the manager and I can go out and perform.’”

Venue Change and Squad Decisions

Following the first two games of the series at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a venue with expansive playing area, England finish the series on Thursday at Eden Park, a multi-use sports facility where the straight boundary at a short distance is among the most compact in the world. With changeable conditions and an new location they have abandoned their recent habit of revealing their team two days in advance while they work out if their ideal XI for this match will be the same as the one that started both previous games.

Upcoming Changes for ODI Series

On Friday, they move to Mount Maunganui and shift attention to one-day internationals, with a somewhat changed squad: Jordan Cox, Zak Crawley and Phil Salt drop out, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith come in. Most newcomers arrived in Auckland on the same day but the scheduling of Archer’s Ashes preparations means he will follow later, travelling with Mark Wood and Josh Tongue, two seamers who are also preparing for the Tests in Australia but are excluded from the white-ball squad. As a result Archer will miss the opening game at Bay Oval, the ground where he was racially abused on his only previous appearance, in a few years back.