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England's preparations for a hot, dry 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 training session before their next match against the Kiwis inside. The purpose isn't always clear what purpose these bilateral series serve, what useful lessons could possibly be gained – but on this occasion, for at least one of the players, that is not an issue.

Tom Banton's Changed Position: Starting Batsman to Middle Order

The cricketer says he is “continuing to develop”, and if it is the kind of line regularly trotted out 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, mostly as an starting player, Banton suddenly finds himself a totally new position, coming in at the middle order. “I didn't have too many conversations,” he said. “They simply brought me back into the squad and informed me, ‘You’re going to bat in the middle order now.’”

Prior to returning in June, the vast majority of Banton’s 162 professional T20 appearances had been as an starting batsman, a further portion at No3 and the rest – but for a brief stint at No 7 in a T20 Blast game previously – at No 4. If England plan to keep him in this altered role he requires every chance to become accustomed 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 the Tour

Banton said that “sometimes where it comes off and it appears brilliant and other times where it doesn’t”, and the first two games of the winter in New Zealand have featured one of each. In the first, he faced a few deliveries and made a low score before getting out to the deep fielder; in the second, he faced a dozen balls, hit runs, and finished unbeaten.

Reflections on Comeback and Growth

The current series has seen Banton come back to the nation in which he first played for his country in November 2019. After that, he drifted back out of the team, made a brief return in recently and then spent more than three years in the wilderness before coming back for the new captain's first T20 as England captain. “On the flight over, it was weird,” he said. “Time has passed when I made my debut. Seems a lot has occurred in that period. I’ve learned a lot about me. The few years after I got dropped from the national team was a difficult phase for me. I had a two- to three-year period where I was finding my way.”

Support from Team Management

Currently, he has been assigned something new to tackle. Banton is thankful 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 approached me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Head out and play your natural game.’ It's reassuring to have that freedom,” Banton said. “I know it’s just a brief comment from the staff, but it gives me the backing that if it doesn't work, it’s not a disaster. It’s something so minor but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the approval from the head coach and I can go out and perform.’”

Shift in Location and Squad Decisions

Following the initial matches of the series at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a stadium with expansive playing area, England finish the series on the next day at Eden Park, a dual-purpose rugby and cricket ground where the straight boundary at 55m is among the shortest in the sport. With changeable conditions and an new location they have abandoned their usual practice of revealing their lineup ahead of time while they determine if their ideal XI here will be the identical as the one that began the earlier fixtures.

Squad Adjustments for One-Day Matches

On Friday, they travel to the coastal town and shift attention to one-day internationals, with a somewhat changed team: three players drop out, while four others come in. Three of those players arrived in Auckland on Wednesday but the scheduling of the bowler's Ashes preparations implies he will arrive later, travelling with Mark Wood and Josh Tongue, two seamers who are also preparing for the Tests in the away series but are excluded from the white-ball squad. Consequently Archer will miss the first match at the venue, the ground where he was racially abused on his sole prior visit, in a few years back.