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The English side's training sessions for a hot, dry T20 World Cup in India in the coming month led them on Wednesday to a chilly, rainy New Zealand's largest city, where they were forced to hold the final training session ahead of their next match against New Zealand inside. It is not always obvious what purpose these bilateral series fulfill, what useful lessons could possibly be learned – but on this occasion, for at least one of the players, that is no concern.

Tom Banton's Changed Position: From Opener to Middle Order

Tom Banton says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the type of statement regularly trotted out even by athletes who have already reached the pinnacle of their game, in his case 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. “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 the summer, the vast majority of Banton’s 162 professional T20 appearances had been as an opener, another 8% at No3 and the rest – but for a brief stint at seventh spot in a T20 Blast game eight years ago – at No 4. If England intend to keep him in this new position he requires every possible opportunity to become accustomed to it, and he has already worked out one thing: “Playing down the order,” he surmised, “is a much tougher than opening.”

Mixed Results in the Tour

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 one of each. In the opener, he lasted a few deliveries and made a low score before getting out to the deep fielder; in the next game, he faced a dozen balls, scored 29, and ended the innings unbeaten.

Reflections on Comeback and Growth

This tour has seen Banton return 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 passed a long period in the sidelines before coming back for the new captain's initial match as skipper. “During the journey, it was weird,” he said. “Time has passed when I started internationally. Seems a lot has occurred in that period. I’ve learned a lot about myself. The few years after I was left out from the national team 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 given a fresh challenge to tackle. Banton is grateful to have been offered a return, and also for the coach's ability to make him comfortable while he works out how best to seize the opportunity. “Baz came up to me before [Monday’s second T20] and said, ‘Go out and play your natural game.’ It’s nice to have that liberty,” Banton said. “I know it’s just a brief comment from the staff, 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 step up and do it.’”

Shift in Location and Squad Decisions

Following the initial matches of the series at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a stadium with unusually long boundaries, England complete it on Thursday at the Auckland arena, a multi-use rugby and cricket ground where the field edge at 55m is among the most compact in the world. With uncertain weather and an unfamiliar venue they have dropped their usual practice of revealing their lineup ahead of time while they determine if their ideal XI here will be the same as the one that started the earlier fixtures.

Squad Adjustments for ODI Series

Next, they move to the coastal town and turn focus to ODIs, with a slightly amended squad: three players are omitted, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith come in. Most newcomers arrived in the city on the same day but the scheduling of Archer’s Test match buildup implies he will follow two days later, travelling with two fellow bowlers, two seamers who are also preparing for the Tests in the away series but are excluded from the white-ball squad. Consequently he will miss the opening game at Bay Oval, the ground where he was racially abused on his only previous appearance, in 2019.