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The English side's training sessions for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in India in the coming month led them on midweek to a chilly, rainy Auckland, where they were compelled to conduct the last practice run ahead of their third game against New Zealand inside. The purpose isn't always clear what purpose these bilateral series fulfill, what useful lessons could possibly be gained – but on this instance, for at least a squad member, that is no concern.

The Batter's Changed Position: Starting Batsman to Lower Down

Tom Banton says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the kind of line regularly trotted out even by players who have long since scaled the pinnacle of their sport, in his case it is certainly accurate. After building his name as a frontline hitter, primarily as an opener, Banton now occupies a completely unfamiliar position, coming in at the middle order. “There weren’t really too many discussions,” he said. “They simply brought me back into the team and informed me, ‘You’re going to bat in the middle order now.’”

Before his recall in June, 87% of Banton’s 162 senior T20 innings had been as an starting batsman, another 8% at No3 and the rest – but for a brief stint at seventh spot in a T20 Blast game previously – at No 4. If England intend to retain him in this altered role he needs every possible opportunity to get used to it, and he has already worked out one thing: “Batting in the middle order,” he surmised, “is a much tougher than starting the innings.”

Mixed Results in New Zealand

The player noted that “sometimes where it works well and it appears brilliant and other times where it fails”, and the initial matches of the tour in the host nation have seen both outcomes. In the first, he faced nine balls and scored nine runs before getting out to long-on; in the next game, he played 12 deliveries, scored 29, and ended the innings not out.

Reflections on Return and Growth

This tour has seen 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, made a brief return in recently and then spent 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. “Time has passed when I made my debut. It feels like a lot has happened in that period. I’ve learned a lot about myself. The period after I was left out from England was a difficult phase for me. I had a couple of years stretch where I was working myself out.”

Support from Team Management

And now, he has been assigned a fresh challenge to tackle. Banton is grateful to have been given another chance, and also for Brendon McCullum’s skill to put him at ease while he figures out how best to grasp it. “The coach came up to me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Go out and play your natural game.’ It's reassuring to have that liberty,” Banton said. “I realize it’s only a small thing someone says, but it provides the support that if it doesn't work, it’s not a disaster. It is so small but for me it’s, ‘Alright, I’ve got the backing from the head coach and I can step up and perform.’”

Shift in Location and Team Selection

Following the initial matches of the series at the South Island ground, a venue with unusually long boundaries, the visitors finish the series on the next day at the Auckland arena, a dual-purpose rugby and cricket ground where the field edge at a short distance is among the shortest in the world. With changeable conditions and an unfamiliar venue they have dropped their recent habit of revealing their lineup ahead of time while they determine if their ideal XI here will be the same as the one that started both previous games.

Upcoming Changes for ODI Series

Next, they move to the coastal town and turn focus to one-day internationals, with a somewhat changed team: Jordan Cox, Zak Crawley and Phil Salt drop out, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith join the squad. Three of those players arrived in the city on Wednesday but the timing of Archer’s Test match buildup implies he will follow two days later, travelling 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. Consequently Archer will be absent for the first match at the venue, the ground where he was subjected to abuse on his only previous appearance, in 2019.