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England's training sessions for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in the subcontinent in the coming month led them on midweek to a chilly, rainy New Zealand's largest city, where they were forced to conduct the final training session ahead of their next match against New Zealand inside. The purpose isn't always clear what purpose these two-team contests fulfill, what valuable insights could possibly be learned – but on this occasion, for at least one of the players, that is no concern.

Tom Banton's Changed Position: Starting Batsman to Lower Down

The cricketer says he is “continuing to develop”, and if it is the type of statement regularly trotted out even by players who have long since scaled the pinnacle of their sport, in his situation it is undeniably true. After building his name as a top-order batter, mostly as an starting player, Banton now occupies a completely unfamiliar role, batting at the middle order. “There weren’t really too many discussions,” he said. “They simply brought me back into the team and informed me, ‘You’re going to bat in the middle order now.’”

Before his recall in June, the vast majority of Banton’s 162 senior T20 innings had been as an opener, another 8% at third position and the remaining handful – but for seven balls at seventh spot in a T20 Blast game eight years ago – at No 4. If England intend to retain him in this altered role he requires every possible opportunity to get used to it, and he has already worked out one thing: “Playing down the order,” he concluded, “is a lot harder than opening.”

Mixed Results in New Zealand

The player noted that “sometimes where it works well and it looks great and on other occasions where it fails”, and the first two games of the winter in New Zealand have seen both outcomes. In the opener, he lasted a few deliveries and made nine runs before holing out to long-on; in the next game, he played a dozen balls, scored 29, and finished not out.

Reflections on Comeback and Growth

The current series has witnessed Banton return to the country in which he made his international debut in November 2019. After that, he moved away of the team, had a short comeback in recently and then spent more than three years in the sidelines before returning for Harry Brook’s first T20 as skipper. “During the journey, it was strange,” he said. “It was six years ago when I started internationally. Seems a lot has occurred in that time. I've discovered a lot about myself. The period after I was left out from England was a tough time for me. I had a couple of years period where I was finding my way.”

Support from Team Management

And now, he has been assigned something new to work out. Banton is grateful to have been given another chance, and also for Brendon McCullum’s ability to put him at ease while he works out how best to seize the opportunity. “The coach approached me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Go out and express yourself.’ It’s nice to have that liberty,” Banton said. “I realize it’s just a brief comment someone says, but it gives me the backing that if it doesn’t come off, it’s not the end of the world. It’s something so small but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the backing from the head coach and I can go out and do it.’”

Venue Change and Team Selection

After playing the first two games of the contest at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a stadium with expansive playing area, England finish the series on Thursday at Eden Park, a dual-purpose sports facility where the field edge at 55m is among the most compact in the world. With changeable conditions and an unfamiliar venue they have abandoned their recent habit of announcing their team ahead of time while they work out if their ideal XI here will be the same as the side that began both previous games.

Upcoming Changes for ODI Series

On Friday, they travel to Mount Maunganui and shift attention to one-day internationals, with a somewhat changed squad: Jordan Cox, Zak Crawley and Phil Salt drop out, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith come in. Three of those players arrived in Auckland on the same day but the scheduling of Archer’s Test match buildup implies he will arrive two days later, flying with two fellow bowlers, fast bowlers who are also preparing for the longer format in Australia but are not in the white-ball squad. Consequently he will miss the first match at the venue, the ground where he was subjected to abuse on his sole prior visit, in 2019.