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England's training sessions for a hot, dry T20 World Cup in India in the coming month brought them on midweek to a cool, drizzly Auckland, where they were forced to hold the final training session before their third game against New Zealand inside. It is not always obvious what role these two-team contests fulfill, what useful lessons could possibly be gained – but on this instance, for at least a squad member, that is not an issue.

Tom Banton's Changed Position: From Opener to Lower Down

The cricketer says he is “continuing to develop”, and if it is the type of statement often repeated even by athletes who have long since scaled the peak of their sport, in his case it is certainly accurate. After forging his reputation as a frontline hitter, primarily as an starting player, Banton suddenly finds himself a completely unfamiliar role, batting at the middle order. “I didn't have too many conversations,” he said. “They simply brought me back into the team and told, ‘You’re going to bat 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, another 8% at No3 and the remaining handful – but for a brief stint at No 7 in a domestic T20 game eight years ago – at No 4. If England intend to keep him in this new position he requires every chance to get used to it, and he has already worked out one thing: “Playing down the order,” he surmised, “is a lot harder than starting the innings.”

Varied Performances in the Tour

The player noted that “there’s going to be times where it comes off and it appears brilliant and on other occasions where it doesn’t”, and the first two games of the tour in the host nation have featured one of each. In the first, he lasted a few deliveries and made nine runs before getting out to the deep fielder; in the next game, he faced 12 deliveries, scored 29, and ended the innings unbeaten.

Reflections on Return and Growth

The current series has seen Banton return to the nation in which he first played for his country in late 2019. Since then, he moved away of the side, made a brief return 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. “It was six years ago when I started internationally. It feels like a lot has occurred in that period. I’ve learned 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 Coaching Staff

And now, he has been assigned a fresh challenge to work out. Banton is thankful to have been given another chance, 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, ‘Head out and express yourself.’ It’s nice to have that liberty,” Banton said. “I know it’s just a brief comment someone says, but it gives me the backing that if it doesn’t come off, it’s not the end of the world. It’s something so minor 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 Team Selection

After playing the initial matches of the contest at the South Island ground, a stadium with unusually long boundaries, England finish the series on the next day at the Auckland arena, a multi-use sports facility where the straight boundary at 55m is among the shortest in the world. With uncertain weather and an unfamiliar venue they have dropped their usual practice of announcing their team two days in advance while they work out if their preferred team for this match will be the same as the one that started both previous games.

Upcoming Changes for ODI Series

Next, they travel to Mount Maunganui and turn focus to one-day internationals, with a slightly amended team: Jordan Cox, Zak Crawley and Phil Salt drop out, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith join the squad. Most newcomers landed in the city on Wednesday but the scheduling of the bowler's Test match buildup implies he will follow two days later, travelling with two fellow bowlers, two seamers who are also building towards the longer format in the away series but are excluded from the limited-overs team. Consequently he will be absent for the first match at the venue, the stadium where he was subjected to abuse on his only previous appearance, in a few years back.