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England's training sessions 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 conduct the final practice run ahead of their third game against the Kiwis inside. The purpose isn't always clear what purpose these two-team contests serve, what useful lessons could possibly be learned – but on this occasion, for at least a squad member, that is not an issue.

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

Tom Banton says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the type of statement regularly trotted out even by athletes who have long since scaled the pinnacle of their game, in his situation it is certainly accurate. After building his name as a frontline hitter, primarily as an opener, Banton suddenly finds himself a completely unfamiliar role, 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 lower batting lineup now.’”

Before his recall in June, 87% of Banton’s 162 senior T20 innings had been as an opener, another 8% at third position and the remaining handful – but for seven balls at No 7 in a T20 Blast game previously – at No 4. If England intend to keep him in this altered role he needs every chance to become accustomed to it, and he has already worked out one thing: “Batting in the middle order,” he surmised, “is a lot harder than starting the innings.”

Varied Performances in New Zealand

Banton said that “there’s going to be times where it comes off and it looks great and on other occasions where it doesn’t”, and the first two games of the tour in the host nation have seen one of each. In the opener, he lasted a few deliveries and scored nine runs before holing out to long-on; in the next game, he played 12 deliveries, hit runs, and ended the innings not out.

Thoughts on Comeback and Development

This tour has witnessed Banton return to the country in which he made his international debut in November 2019. After that, he moved away of the side, had a short comeback in 2022 and then spent a long period in the wilderness before returning for Harry Brook’s first T20 as England captain. “On the flight over, it was weird,” he said. “Time has passed when I made my debut. Seems a lot has occurred in that time. I've discovered a lot about myself. The period after I got dropped from the national team 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 assigned something new to tackle. Banton is grateful to have been offered a return, and also for the coach's skill to put him at ease while he figures out how best to seize the opportunity. “Baz came up to me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Head out and express yourself.’ It's reassuring to have that freedom,” Banton said. “I realize it’s just a brief comment from the staff, but it provides the backing that if it doesn’t come off, it’s not a disaster. It’s something so minor but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the backing from the manager and I can go out and do it.’”

Venue Change and Squad Decisions

Following the initial matches of the contest at the South Island ground, a venue 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 a short distance is among the shortest in the world. 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 same as the side that started the earlier fixtures.

Upcoming Changes for One-Day Matches

On Friday, they move to Mount Maunganui and shift attention to ODIs, with a slightly amended squad: three players drop out, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith join the squad. Three of those players arrived in Auckland on the same day but the scheduling of Archer’s Test match buildup means he will follow later, flying with two fellow bowlers, fast bowlers who are also building towards the longer format in Australia but are not in the limited-overs team. Consequently he will miss the opening game at Bay Oval, the stadium where he was racially abused on his only previous appearance, in 2019.