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The English side's preparations 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 forced to hold the last training session before their third game against New Zealand indoors. It is not always obvious what purpose these bilateral series fulfill, what valuable insights could possibly be gained – but on this occasion, for at least one of the players, that is not an issue.

Tom Banton's New Role: From Opener to Lower Down

The cricketer says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the kind of line often repeated even by athletes who have already reached the peak of their game, in his case it is certainly accurate. After building his name as a frontline hitter, primarily as an starting player, Banton suddenly finds himself a completely unfamiliar role, coming in at the middle order. “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.’”

Prior to returning in June, 87% of Banton’s 162 senior T20 innings had been as an opener, a further portion at third position and the rest – but for seven balls at seventh spot in a domestic T20 game previously – at fourth place. If England intend to retain him in this altered role he requires every possible opportunity to get used to it, and he has already worked out one thing: “Batting in the middle order,” he concluded, “is a lot harder than opening.”

Varied Performances in New Zealand

Banton said that “there’s going to be times where it works well and it appears brilliant and on other occasions where it doesn’t”, and the first two games of the tour in New Zealand have seen one of each. In the opener, he lasted nine balls and scored nine runs before holing out to the deep fielder; in the next game, he played a dozen balls, scored 29, and ended the innings unbeaten.

Reflections on Comeback and Growth

This tour has seen Banton come back to the country in which he made his international debut in late 2019. Since then, he drifted back out of the side, had a short comeback in 2022 and then spent a long period in the sidelines before returning for the new captain's initial match as England captain. “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 period. I've discovered a lot about myself. The few years after I was left out from the national team was a tough time for me. I had a two- to three-year period where I was working myself out.”

Support from Coaching Staff

And now, he has been assigned a fresh challenge to tackle. Banton is thankful to have been offered a return, and also for the coach's skill to put him at ease while he works out how best to seize the opportunity. “Baz approached me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Head out and play your natural game.’ It's reassuring to have that freedom,” Banton said. “I realize it’s just a brief comment someone says, 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, ‘OK, I’ve got the backing from the manager and I can step up and perform.’”

Shift in Location and Team Selection

Following the initial matches of the contest at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, 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 straight boundary at 55m is among the most compact in the world. With changeable conditions and an new location they have abandoned their recent habit of revealing their lineup two days in advance while they determine if their preferred team for this match will be the identical as the one that started the earlier fixtures.

Squad Adjustments for ODI Series

Next, they travel to the coastal town and shift attention to one-day internationals, with a somewhat changed team: three players drop out, while four others join the squad. Three of those players arrived in Auckland on the same day but the scheduling of Archer’s Ashes preparations implies he will arrive two days later, flying with Mark Wood and Josh Tongue, fast bowlers who are also preparing for the longer format in Australia but are not in the white-ball squad. Consequently Archer will miss the opening game at Bay Oval, the ground where he was racially abused on his only previous appearance, in 2019.