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The English side's training sessions for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in India in the coming month brought them on Wednesday to a cool, drizzly New Zealand's largest city, where they were compelled to hold the final practice run ahead of their third game against the Kiwis indoors. The purpose isn't always clear what purpose these two-team contests serve, what useful lessons could possibly be learned – but on this instance, for at least one of the players, that is not an issue.

The Batter's New Role: From Opener to Middle Order

Tom Banton says he is “continuing to develop”, and if it is the type of statement regularly trotted out even by players who have already reached the pinnacle of their game, in his case it is certainly accurate. After building his name as a top-order batter, mostly as an starting player, Banton now occupies a completely unfamiliar role, batting at the middle order. “There weren’t really too many discussions,” he said. “I just got brought me back into the team and informed me, ‘Your role will be in the middle order now.’”

Before his recall in the summer, 87% of Banton’s 162 senior T20 innings had been as an opener, another 8% at third position and the remaining handful – but for a brief stint at seventh spot in a domestic T20 game eight years ago – at No 4. If England plan to keep him in this new position 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 the Tour

The player noted that “there’s going to be times where it comes off and it looks great and other times where it doesn’t”, and the first two games of the tour in the host nation have seen both outcomes. In the first, he faced nine balls and made a low score before getting out to long-on; in the second, he played a dozen balls, scored 29, and finished unbeaten.

Thoughts on Return and Development

The current series has witnessed Banton come back to the country in which he made his international debut in November 2019. Since then, he drifted back out of the side, had a short comeback in recently and then passed a long period in the sidelines before coming back for Harry Brook’s first T20 as skipper. “On the flight over, it was weird,” he said. “Time has passed when I made my debut. It feels like a lot has happened in that time. I’ve learned a lot about myself. The period after I got dropped from the national team was a difficult phase for me. I had a two- to three-year stretch where I was finding my way.”

Support from Coaching Staff

Currently, he has been assigned a fresh challenge to work out. Banton is thankful 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 grasp it. “Baz came up to me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Go out and play your natural game.’ It’s nice to have that liberty,” Banton said. “I know it’s just a brief comment someone says, but it provides the backing that if it doesn't work, it’s not a disaster. It is so minor but for me it’s, ‘Alright, I’ve got the approval from the manager and I can go out and do it.’”

Venue Change and Squad Decisions

After playing the initial matches of the series at the South Island ground, a stadium with unusually long boundaries, the visitors complete it on the next day at Eden Park, a dual-purpose rugby and cricket ground where the field edge at 55m is among the most compact in the sport. With changeable conditions and an unfamiliar venue they have dropped their usual practice of announcing their team ahead of time while they determine if their preferred team for this match will be the identical as the one that started both previous games.

Squad Adjustments for One-Day Matches

Next, they travel to Mount Maunganui and shift attention to ODIs, with a slightly amended squad: Jordan Cox, Zak Crawley and Phil Salt are omitted, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith come in. Most newcomers arrived in the city on the same day but the timing of Archer’s Ashes preparations implies he will arrive later, flying with two fellow bowlers, two seamers who are also preparing for the Tests in the away series but are not in the white-ball squad. As a result Archer will be absent for the opening game at Bay Oval, the ground where he was subjected to abuse on his sole prior visit, in a few years back.