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England's training sessions for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in India in February brought them on Wednesday to a chilly, rainy 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 serve, what valuable insights could possibly be learned – but on this instance, for at least one of the players, that is no concern.

Tom Banton's New Role: Starting Batsman to Middle Order

The cricketer says he is “continuing to develop”, and if it is the kind of line often repeated even by players who have already reached the pinnacle of their game, 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, coming in at the middle order. “There weren’t really too many conversations,” he said. “I just got brought me back into the team and told, ‘You’re going to bat in the middle order now.’”

Prior to returning in the summer, 87% of Banton’s over 160 senior T20 innings had been as an starting batsman, another 8% at No3 and the rest – but for seven balls at seventh spot in a T20 Blast game previously – at No 4. If the team plan to keep him in this altered role he requires every chance to get used to it, and he has already worked out one thing: “Batting in the middle order,” he concluded, “is a lot harder than opening.”

Mixed Results in the Tour

The player noted that “sometimes where it works well and it looks great and other times where it fails”, and the initial matches of the tour in New Zealand have featured one of each. In the opener, he faced a few deliveries and made a low score before getting out to long-on; in the next game, he faced 12 deliveries, scored 29, and finished not out.

Thoughts on Comeback and Growth

This tour has seen Banton return to the nation in which he made his international debut in November 2019. Since then, he drifted back out of the team, had a short comeback in 2022 and then passed a long period in the wilderness before returning for the new captain's first T20 as England captain. “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 myself. The period after I was left out from the national team was a difficult phase for me. I had a couple of years stretch where I was finding my way.”

Support from Team Management

Currently, he has been given something new to tackle. Banton is thankful to have been offered a return, and also for the coach's ability to put him at ease while he figures out how best to grasp it. “The coach 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 someone says, but it gives me the backing that if it doesn't work, it’s not the end of the world. It’s something so small but for me it’s, ‘Alright, I’ve got the approval from the head coach and I can step up and do it.’”

Venue Change and Squad Decisions

After playing the initial matches of the contest at the South Island ground, a venue with unusually long boundaries, the visitors complete it on the next day 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 unfamiliar venue they have abandoned their recent habit of revealing their lineup ahead of time while they determine if their preferred team here will be the same as the side that started both previous games.

Squad Adjustments 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 join the squad. Most newcomers landed in Auckland on Wednesday but the timing of the bowler's Ashes preparations implies he will follow later, travelling with two fellow bowlers, two seamers who are also preparing for the longer format in Australia but are excluded from the limited-overs team. As a result Archer will be absent for the first match at the venue, the stadium where he was racially abused on his only previous appearance, in 2019.