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The English side's training sessions for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in India in the coming month led them on Wednesday to a chilly, rainy New Zealand's largest city, where they were compelled to hold the final training session ahead of their next match against New Zealand inside. The purpose isn't always clear what purpose these two-team contests fulfill, what valuable insights could possibly be learned – but on this instance, for at least a squad member, that is not an issue.

Tom Banton's Changed Position: Starting Batsman to Lower Down

The cricketer says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the type of statement regularly trotted out even by players who have already reached the peak of their sport, in his situation it is undeniably true. After forging his reputation as a top-order batter, mostly as an opener, Banton now occupies a completely unfamiliar role, coming in at the middle order. “There weren’t really too many discussions,” he said. “They simply brought me back into the squad and informed me, ‘You’re going to bat in the middle order now.’”

Before his recall in June, 87% of Banton’s 162 professional T20 appearances had been as an opener, another 8% at third position and the remaining handful – but for a brief stint at No 7 in a T20 Blast game previously – at No 4. If the team 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 much tougher than opening.”

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 fails”, and the first two games of the winter in New Zealand have featured one of each. In the opener, he faced a few deliveries and made a low score before holing out to long-on; in the next game, he faced 12 deliveries, scored 29, and ended the innings not out.

Thoughts on Return and Growth

The current series has seen Banton return to the nation in which he first played for his country in late 2019. Since then, he drifted back out of the side, made a brief return in recently and then spent more than three years in the sidelines before returning for Harry Brook’s initial match as skipper. “On the flight over, it was strange,” he said. “It was six years ago when I made my debut. It feels like a lot has occurred in that period. I’ve learned a lot about myself. The period after I got dropped from England was a difficult phase for me. I had a two- to three-year period where I was finding my way.”

Support from Team Management

Currently, he has been assigned something new to work out. Banton is grateful to have been given another chance, and also for the coach's skill to make him comfortable while he works out how best to seize the opportunity. “The coach approached me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Go out and play your natural game.’ It's reassuring to have that liberty,” Banton said. “I realize it’s only a small thing someone says, but it provides the backing that if it doesn’t come off, it’s not the end of the world. It is so minor but for me it’s, ‘Alright, I’ve got the approval from the head coach and I can go out and do it.’”

Shift in Location and Team Selection

After playing the first two games of the contest at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a stadium with expansive playing area, England complete it on the next day at the Auckland arena, a multi-use sports facility where the field edge at 55m is among the most compact 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 ideal XI here will be the same as the one that began the earlier fixtures.

Upcoming Changes for One-Day Matches

Next, they move to Mount Maunganui and shift attention to one-day internationals, with a somewhat changed team: 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 Auckland on the same day but the timing of the bowler's Ashes preparations means he will follow two days later, flying with two fellow bowlers, two seamers who are also building towards the longer format in the away series but are not in the white-ball squad. Consequently Archer will miss the first match at the venue, the stadium where he was racially abused on his sole prior visit, in 2019.