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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 chilly, rainy Auckland, where they were compelled to conduct the last training session ahead of their next match against the Kiwis inside. It is not always obvious what role these two-team contests fulfill, what valuable insights could possibly be gained – but on this occasion, for at least a squad member, that is not an issue.

Tom Banton's Changed Position: From Opener to Middle Order

The cricketer says he is “continuing to develop”, and if it is the type of statement often repeated even by players who have long since scaled the pinnacle of their sport, in his case it is undeniably true. After forging his reputation as a frontline hitter, mostly as an starting player, Banton suddenly finds himself a totally new position, coming in at five or six. “There weren’t really too many discussions,” he said. “They simply brought me back into the squad 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 starting batsman, another 8% at third position and the rest – but for seven balls at seventh spot in a domestic T20 game eight years ago – at No 4. If England intend to keep him in this altered role he requires every chance to get used to it, and he has already worked out a key point: “Batting in the middle order,” he surmised, “is a lot harder than starting the innings.”

Mixed Results in New Zealand

The player noted that “sometimes where it comes off and it looks great and other times where it fails”, and the first two games of the tour in the host nation have seen both outcomes. In the first, he faced a few deliveries and made nine runs before holing out to long-on; in the second, he faced 12 deliveries, hit runs, and ended the innings unbeaten.

Reflections on Return and Growth

This tour has witnessed Banton come back to the country in which he first played for his country in late 2019. Since then, he drifted back out of the team, had a short comeback in 2022 and then spent a long period in the wilderness before returning for the new captain's first T20 as England captain. “On the flight over, it was strange,” he said. “Time has passed when I started internationally. Seems a lot has occurred in that time. I’ve learned a lot about myself. The period after I got dropped from the national team was a tough time for me. I had a two- to three-year stretch where I was finding my way.”

Support from Team Management

And now, he has been assigned a fresh challenge to work out. Banton is grateful 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 seize the opportunity. “Baz approached me before [Monday’s second T20] and said, ‘Go out and express yourself.’ It's reassuring to have that liberty,” Banton said. “I know it’s just a brief comment from the staff, but it provides the backing that if it doesn't work, it’s not the end of the world. It is so minor but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the backing from the head coach and I can step up and do it.’”

Shift in Location and Team Selection

Following the first two games of the series at the South Island ground, a stadium with expansive playing area, England finish the series on the next day at the Auckland arena, a multi-use sports facility where the straight boundary at a short distance is among the most compact in the sport. With changeable conditions and an unfamiliar venue they have abandoned their usual practice of revealing their lineup two days in advance while they work out if their preferred team here will be the identical 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 squad: Jordan Cox, Zak Crawley and Phil Salt drop out, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith come in. Three of those players landed in Auckland on the same day but the scheduling of Archer’s Ashes preparations implies he will follow later, travelling with two fellow bowlers, fast bowlers who are also building towards the longer format in Australia but are excluded from the limited-overs team. As a result Archer will be absent for the opening game at Bay Oval, the stadium where he was racially abused on his sole prior visit, in a few years back.