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The English side's preparations for a hot, dry T20 World Cup in India in February led them on Wednesday to a cool, drizzly Auckland, where they were forced to hold the last training session before their third game against the Kiwis indoors. It is not always obvious what role these two-team contests fulfill, what useful lessons could possibly be gained – but on this occasion, for at least one of the players, that is no concern.

Tom Banton's New Role: Starting Batsman to Lower Down

The cricketer says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the type of statement often repeated even by players who have already reached the peak of their game, in his case it is undeniably true. After building his name as a top-order batter, mostly as an starting player, Banton now occupies a completely unfamiliar role, coming in at the middle order. “I didn't have too many conversations,” he said. “They simply brought me back into the squad and informed me, ‘Your role will be in the middle order now.’”

Before his recall in June, 87% of Banton’s over 160 professional T20 appearances had been as an starting batsman, a further portion at No3 and the rest – but for seven balls at seventh spot in a T20 Blast game previously – at No 4. If England intend to keep him in this new position he needs 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 initial matches of the winter in New Zealand have seen one of each. In the opener, he lasted nine balls and made a low score before getting out to the deep fielder; in the second, he played a dozen balls, scored 29, and ended the innings not out.

Thoughts on Return and Growth

The current series has seen Banton come back to the country in which he made his international debut in late 2019. After that, he drifted back out of the team, made a brief return in 2022 and then passed more than three years in the sidelines before returning for the new captain's first T20 as England captain. “On the flight over, it was strange,” he said. “It was six years ago when I made my debut. Seems a lot has occurred in that time. I've discovered a lot about me. The few years after I got dropped 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 Team Management

And now, he has been given a fresh challenge to tackle. Banton is grateful to have been given another chance, and also for the coach's ability to put him at ease while he works out how best to seize the opportunity. “The coach came up to me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Go out and play your natural game.’ It’s nice to have that freedom,” Banton said. “I know it’s just a brief comment from the staff, but it provides the support that if it doesn't work, it’s not a disaster. It’s something so small but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the approval from the manager and I can go out 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, England finish the series on the next day at Eden Park, a multi-use sports facility where the straight boundary at 55m is among the most compact in the sport. With changeable conditions and an new location they have dropped their recent habit of announcing their team ahead of time while they determine if their ideal XI here will be the same as the side that started the earlier fixtures.

Squad Adjustments for One-Day Matches

Next, they move to Mount Maunganui and shift attention to ODIs, with a somewhat changed team: three players are omitted, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith come in. Most newcomers arrived in Auckland on Wednesday but the timing of the bowler's Test match buildup means he will follow two days later, flying with Mark Wood and Josh Tongue, two seamers who are also building towards the longer format in Australia but are excluded from the white-ball squad. As a result Archer will be absent for the opening game at Bay Oval, the stadium where he was subjected to abuse on his only previous appearance, in a few years back.