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England's training sessions for a hot, dry T20 World Cup in the subcontinent in the coming month brought them on midweek to a chilly, rainy New Zealand's largest city, where they were compelled to hold the last training session before their next match against New Zealand inside. The purpose isn't always clear what purpose these two-team contests fulfill, what useful lessons could possibly be gained – but on this instance, for at least one of the players, that is not an issue.

Tom Banton's New Role: From Opener to Lower Down

The cricketer 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 sport, in his case it is certainly accurate. After building his name as a top-order batter, mostly as an starting player, Banton now occupies a totally new position, batting at the middle order. “There weren’t really too many conversations,” he said. “I just got brought me back into the team and told, ‘Your role will be in the lower batting lineup now.’”

Before his recall in June, 87% of Banton’s over 160 senior T20 innings had been as an starting batsman, a further portion at third position and the rest – but for seven balls at seventh spot in a T20 Blast game previously – at fourth place. If the team intend to retain him in this new position he needs every chance to become accustomed to it, and he has already worked out a key point: “Batting in the middle order,” he surmised, “is a much tougher than opening.”

Varied Performances in New Zealand

The player noted that “there’s going to be times where it works well and it looks great and other times where it doesn’t”, and the initial matches of the winter in the host nation have seen both outcomes. In the first, he faced a few deliveries and scored a low score before holing out to the deep fielder; in the second, he played 12 deliveries, hit runs, and ended the innings unbeaten.

Thoughts on Comeback and Development

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, had a short comeback in recently and then passed a long period in the sidelines before coming back for the new captain's first T20 as skipper. “During the journey, it was strange,” he said. “It was six years ago when I started internationally. It feels like a lot has happened in that time. I've discovered a lot about me. The period after I was left out from England was a difficult phase for me. I had a couple of years period where I was working myself out.”

Backing from Coaching Staff

Currently, he has been assigned a fresh challenge to tackle. Banton is thankful to have been offered a return, and also for the coach's skill 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 realize it’s only a small thing from the staff, but it gives me 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 approval from the head coach and I can go out and do it.’”

Shift in Location and Team Selection

After playing the first two games of the contest at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a stadium with expansive playing area, England complete it on Thursday at Eden Park, a dual-purpose sports facility where the field edge at 55m is among the shortest in the world. With uncertain weather and an new location they have abandoned their usual practice of announcing their team ahead of time while they work out if their preferred team here will be the identical as the one that started the earlier fixtures.

Squad Adjustments for One-Day Matches

Next, they travel to the coastal town and shift attention to ODIs, 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. Three of those players landed in the city on the same day but the scheduling of the bowler's Ashes preparations means he will arrive later, travelling with two fellow bowlers, 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 Bay Oval, the ground where he was subjected to abuse on his sole prior visit, in 2019.