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The English side's training sessions for a hot, dry T20 World Cup in India in February brought them on Wednesday to a cool, drizzly Auckland, where they were compelled to hold the final training session ahead of their next match against New Zealand inside. It is not always obvious what role 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 Changed Position: From Opener to Middle Order

Tom Banton says he is “continuing to develop”, and if it is the type of statement often repeated even by athletes who have long since scaled the pinnacle of their sport, in his situation it is undeniably true. After building his name as a frontline hitter, primarily as an starting player, Banton now occupies a totally new position, batting at the middle order. “There weren’t really too many discussions,” he said. “I just got 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 starting batsman, another 8% at third position and the remaining handful – but for seven balls at No 7 in a T20 Blast game eight years ago – at fourth place. If the team plan to keep him in this altered role he requires every chance to become accustomed to it, and he has already worked out one thing: “Batting in the middle order,” he surmised, “is a much tougher than opening.”

Mixed Results in the Tour

Banton said that “sometimes where it works well and it looks great and other times where it fails”, and the initial matches of the winter in the host nation have seen one of each. In the opener, he faced nine balls and scored a low score before getting out to the deep fielder; in the second, he faced 12 deliveries, scored 29, and finished unbeaten.

Thoughts on Comeback and Development

The current series has witnessed Banton return to the nation in which he first played for his country in November 2019. Since then, he drifted back out of the side, had a short comeback in recently and then passed more than three years in the wilderness before coming back for the new captain's initial match as England captain. “On the flight over, 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 me. The few years after I got dropped from England was a difficult phase for me. I had a couple of years period where I was finding my way.”

Backing from Coaching Staff

Currently, he has been given a fresh challenge to work out. Banton is thankful to have been offered a return, and also for Brendon McCullum’s skill to put him at ease while he figures out how best to grasp it. “Baz 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 from the staff, but it provides the backing that if it doesn’t come off, it’s not the end of the world. It’s something so minor but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the approval from the head coach and I can go out and do it.’”

Shift in Location and Squad Decisions

Following the first two games of the contest at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a stadium with unusually long boundaries, England complete it on the next day at Eden Park, a dual-purpose sports facility where the field edge at 55m is among the shortest in the sport. With changeable conditions and an unfamiliar venue they have abandoned their recent habit of revealing their lineup ahead of time 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 Mount Maunganui and turn focus to ODIs, with a slightly amended squad: three players are omitted, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith join the squad. Three of those players landed in the city on the same day but the scheduling of Archer’s Ashes preparations means he will follow later, travelling with two fellow bowlers, fast bowlers who are also preparing for the Tests in the away series but are not in the limited-overs team. As a result Archer will miss the first match at the venue, the stadium where he was subjected to abuse on his sole prior visit, in a few years back.