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England's preparations for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in India in the coming month led them on midweek to a cool, drizzly New Zealand's largest city, where they were forced to hold the last practice run ahead of their next match against the Kiwis indoors. 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 New Role: From Opener to Lower Down

Tom Banton 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 undeniably true. After building his name as a frontline hitter, primarily as an starting player, Banton suddenly finds himself a totally new 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 told, ‘You’re going to bat in the middle order now.’”

Before his recall in the summer, the vast majority of Banton’s 162 senior T20 innings had been as an opener, another 8% at No3 and the rest – but for seven balls at seventh spot in a T20 Blast game eight years ago – at No 4. If the team plan to keep him in this altered role he requires every possible opportunity to get used to it, and he has figured out one thing: “Batting in the middle order,” he concluded, “is a lot harder than starting the innings.”

Mixed Results in New Zealand

Banton said that “sometimes where it works well and it looks great and other times where it fails”, and the first two games of the tour in New Zealand have featured both outcomes. In the first, he lasted nine balls and scored a low score before holing out to long-on; in the second, he faced a dozen balls, scored 29, and finished not out.

Reflections on Comeback and Development

This tour has seen Banton come back to the country in which he first played for his country in late 2019. After that, he moved away of the team, made a brief return in 2022 and then spent a long period in the wilderness before coming back for the new captain's initial match as England captain. “On the flight over, it was strange,” 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 England was a tough time for me. I had a two- to three-year period where I was finding my way.”

Backing from Team Management

And now, he has been assigned something new to work out. Banton is thankful to have been offered a return, and also for the coach's ability to make him comfortable while he figures out how best to grasp it. “Baz approached me before [Monday’s second T20] and said, ‘Go out and express yourself.’ It’s nice to have that liberty,” Banton said. “I know 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 minor but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the approval from the manager and I can go out and perform.’”

Shift in Location and Team Selection

Following the first two games of the series at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a stadium with unusually long boundaries, England finish the series on Thursday at the Auckland arena, a dual-purpose sports facility where the field edge at a short distance is among the most compact in the world. With changeable conditions and an new location they have dropped their recent habit of announcing their lineup ahead of time while they work out if their ideal XI here will be the identical as the one that started both previous games.

Upcoming Changes for One-Day Matches

On Friday, they move to Mount Maunganui and turn focus to ODIs, with a somewhat changed team: three players are omitted, while four others come in. Three of those players landed in the city on the same day but the timing of the bowler's Test match buildup implies he will arrive later, travelling with Mark Wood and Josh Tongue, fast bowlers who are also building towards the Tests in the away series but are excluded from the white-ball squad. As a result Archer will miss the first match at the venue, the ground where he was subjected to abuse on his only previous appearance, in 2019.