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England's preparations for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in India in the coming month led them on Wednesday to a cool, drizzly New Zealand's largest city, where they were compelled to conduct the last training session before their next match against New Zealand inside. The purpose isn't always clear what purpose these two-team contests serve, what valuable insights could possibly be gained – but on this instance, for at least one of the players, that is no concern.

Tom Banton's New Role: Starting Batsman to Lower Down

Tom Banton says he is “continuing to develop”, and if it is the kind of line regularly trotted out even by athletes who have already reached the peak of their game, in his case it is undeniably true. After forging his reputation as a top-order batter, primarily as an opener, Banton suddenly finds himself a completely unfamiliar position, batting at the middle order. “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.’”

Prior to returning in the summer, the vast majority of Banton’s 162 professional T20 appearances had been as an opener, another 8% at third position and the rest – but for seven balls at No 7 in a domestic T20 game previously – at fourth place. If the team plan to retain him in this altered role he requires every possible opportunity to become accustomed to it, and he has figured out a key point: “Batting in the middle order,” he surmised, “is a lot harder than opening.”

Mixed Results in the Tour

The player noted that “sometimes where it works well and it appears brilliant and other times where it fails”, and the first two games of the tour in New Zealand have seen one of each. In the opener, he faced a few deliveries and scored a low score before getting out to long-on; in the second, he faced 12 deliveries, hit runs, and ended the innings unbeaten.

Thoughts on Return and Growth

The current series has seen Banton return to the country in which he made his international debut in November 2019. Since then, he moved away of the team, made a brief return in 2022 and then spent more than three years in the wilderness before coming back for the new captain's first T20 as skipper. “During the journey, it was weird,” he said. “It was six years ago when I made my debut. It feels like a lot has happened in that time. I've discovered a lot about myself. The period after I was left out from England was a difficult phase for me. I had a two- to three-year period where I was working myself out.”

Backing from Coaching Staff

Currently, he has been assigned a fresh challenge to work out. Banton is grateful to have been offered a return, and also for Brendon McCullum’s ability to make him comfortable while he works out how best to grasp it. “The coach came up to me before [Monday’s second T20] and said, ‘Head out and express yourself.’ It’s nice to have that freedom,” Banton said. “I know it’s just a brief comment someone says, but it gives me the backing that if it doesn’t come off, it’s not a disaster. It is so small but for me it’s, ‘Alright, I’ve got the backing from the head coach and I can go out and do it.’”

Shift in Location and Team Selection

Following the first two games of the series at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a stadium with expansive playing area, the visitors finish the series on the next day at Eden Park, a multi-use sports facility where the straight boundary at 55m is among the shortest in the sport. With changeable conditions and an new location they have abandoned their recent habit of revealing their lineup two days in advance while they determine if their preferred team here will be the identical as the one that began both previous games.

Squad Adjustments for One-Day Matches

Next, they move to the coastal town and turn focus to one-day internationals, with a somewhat changed squad: Jordan Cox, Zak Crawley and Phil Salt are omitted, while four others come in. Three of those players landed in Auckland on the same day but the timing of Archer’s Test match buildup implies he will follow two days later, travelling with Mark Wood and Josh Tongue, two seamers who are also preparing for the longer format in the away series but are excluded from the white-ball squad. As a result Archer will be absent for the first match at Bay Oval, the ground where he was subjected to abuse on his only previous appearance, in 2019.