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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 Auckland, where they were compelled to hold the final training session before their next match against the Kiwis indoors. It is not always obvious what role these two-team contests fulfill, what valuable insights could possibly be learned – but on this occasion, for at least a squad member, that is not an issue.

The Batter's New Role: From Opener to Lower Down

Tom Banton says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the type of statement often repeated even by players who have already reached the pinnacle of their game, in his situation it is undeniably true. After building his name as a top-order batter, primarily as an starting player, Banton now occupies a totally new position, batting at five or six. “There weren’t really too many conversations,” 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, the vast majority of Banton’s 162 senior T20 innings had been as an opener, another 8% at No3 and the remaining handful – but for a brief stint at seventh spot in a domestic T20 game eight years ago – at fourth place. If England plan to keep him in this altered role he needs every chance to become accustomed to it, and he has already worked out one thing: “Playing down the order,” he surmised, “is a much tougher than starting the innings.”

Mixed Results in New Zealand

Banton said that “sometimes where it works well and it appears brilliant and on other occasions where it doesn’t”, and the initial matches of the tour in New Zealand have featured one of each. In the first, he lasted nine balls and scored a low score before holing out to the deep fielder; in the next game, he played 12 deliveries, scored 29, and ended the innings unbeaten.

Reflections on Return and Growth

The current series has witnessed Banton come back to the nation in which he first played for his country in November 2019. After that, he moved away of the team, made a brief return in recently and then passed more than three years in the wilderness before returning for the new captain's first T20 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 happened in that period. I’ve learned a lot about me. The period 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.”

Support from Team Management

Currently, he has been given something new to tackle. Banton is grateful to have been given another chance, and also for the coach's skill to make him comfortable while he figures out how best to seize the opportunity. “The coach came up to me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Head 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 gives me the support that if it doesn’t come off, it’s not the end of the world. It’s something so small but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the backing from the head coach and I can go out and perform.’”

Shift in Location and Squad Decisions

After playing the initial matches of the series at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a venue with expansive playing area, England finish the series 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 usual practice of announcing their team two days in advance while they work out if their ideal XI here will be the identical as the one that began the earlier fixtures.

Squad Adjustments for One-Day Matches

On Friday, they move to the coastal town and shift attention to one-day internationals, with a somewhat changed squad: Jordan Cox, Zak Crawley and Phil Salt are omitted, while four others come in. Most newcomers landed in Auckland on the same day but the timing of Archer’s Ashes preparations means he will follow two days later, travelling with Mark Wood and Josh Tongue, fast bowlers who are also building towards the longer format in Australia but are excluded from the limited-overs team. Consequently he will miss the opening game at Bay Oval, the stadium where he was subjected to abuse on his sole prior visit, in 2019.