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England's training sessions for a hot, dry T20 World Cup in the subcontinent 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 before their next match against the Kiwis inside. It is not always obvious what purpose these bilateral series fulfill, what useful lessons could possibly be gained – but on this instance, for at least a squad member, that is no concern.

Tom Banton's Changed Position: From Opener to Lower Down

The cricketer 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 pinnacle of their game, in his case it is certainly accurate. After forging his reputation as a top-order batter, mostly as an starting player, Banton now occupies a totally new position, coming in at the middle order. “I didn't have too many conversations,” he said. “I just got brought me back into the squad and informed me, ‘You’re going to bat in the lower batting lineup now.’”

Prior to returning in the summer, the vast majority of Banton’s over 160 professional T20 appearances had been as an opener, another 8% at third position and the remaining handful – but for seven balls at seventh spot in a T20 Blast game eight years ago – at No 4. If England plan to retain him in this altered role he requires every possible opportunity to become accustomed to it, and he has already worked out one thing: “Batting in the middle order,” he surmised, “is a lot harder than starting the innings.”

Mixed Results in New Zealand

Banton said that “there’s going to be times where it works well and it looks great and other times where it doesn’t”, and the first two games of the winter in the host nation have featured one of each. In the opener, he faced nine balls and made nine runs before holing out to long-on; in the next game, he faced a dozen balls, scored 29, and ended the innings not out.

Reflections on Comeback and Development

This tour has witnessed Banton come back to the country in which he first played for his country in late 2019. After that, he drifted back out of the team, made a brief return in 2022 and then spent a long period in the wilderness before coming back for Harry Brook’s initial match as skipper. “On the flight over, 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 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 period where I was finding my way.”

Support 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 the coach's ability to put him at ease while he figures out how best to seize the opportunity. “Baz 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 realize it’s just a brief comment from the staff, but it provides the support that if it doesn’t come off, it’s not the end of the world. It is so small but for me it’s, ‘Alright, I’ve got the backing from the head coach and I can step up and do it.’”

Venue Change and Team Selection

After playing the initial matches of the series at the South Island ground, a venue with unusually long boundaries, the visitors complete it on Thursday at the Auckland arena, a multi-use rugby and cricket ground where the field edge at 55m is among the most compact in the world. With changeable conditions and an unfamiliar venue they have dropped their usual practice of revealing their lineup ahead of time while they determine if their ideal XI here will be the identical as the side that began both previous games.

Squad Adjustments for One-Day Matches

Next, they move to Mount Maunganui and shift attention to ODIs, with a somewhat changed team: three players are omitted, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith join the squad. Three of those players arrived in the city on the same day but the scheduling of Archer’s Ashes preparations implies he will follow later, flying with two fellow bowlers, fast bowlers who are also building towards the Tests in Australia but are not in the limited-overs team. Consequently he will be absent for the first match at Bay Oval, the ground where he was subjected to abuse on his sole prior visit, in 2019.