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England's training sessions for a hot, dry T20 World Cup in the subcontinent in February brought them on Wednesday to a chilly, rainy New Zealand's largest city, where they were forced to conduct the final practice run before their next match against the Kiwis inside. It is not always obvious what purpose these two-team contests serve, what useful lessons could possibly be gained – but on this instance, for at least one of the players, that is not an issue.

Tom Banton's New Role: From Opener to Lower Down

The cricketer says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the kind of line regularly trotted out even by athletes who have already reached the peak of their game, in his case it is certainly accurate. After forging his reputation as a frontline hitter, mostly as an opener, 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, ‘Your role will be in the lower batting lineup now.’”

Prior to returning in the summer, 87% of Banton’s 162 senior T20 innings had been as an starting batsman, a further portion at No3 and the rest – but for seven balls at No 7 in a T20 Blast game eight years ago – at fourth place. If the team plan to keep him in this altered role he needs every chance to become accustomed to it, and he has already worked out a key point: “Batting in the middle order,” he concluded, “is a lot harder than opening.”

Varied Performances in the Tour

The player noted that “there’s going to be times where it comes off and it looks great and on other occasions where it fails”, and the first two games of the tour in New Zealand have featured one of each. In the first, he faced nine balls and made nine runs before getting out to the deep fielder; in the next game, he faced a dozen balls, hit runs, and ended the innings unbeaten.

Reflections on Return and Growth

This tour has seen Banton come back to the nation in which he first played for his country in November 2019. After that, he moved away of the side, made a brief return in 2022 and then passed a long period in the wilderness before coming back for Harry Brook’s first T20 as skipper. “On the flight over, it was strange,” he said. “It was six years ago when I made my debut. It feels like a lot has occurred in that period. I've discovered 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 stretch where I was working myself out.”

Backing from Team Management

And now, he has been given a fresh challenge 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 seize the opportunity. “The coach approached me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Go out and play your natural game.’ It's reassuring to have that liberty,” Banton said. “I know it’s only a small thing 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, ‘OK, I’ve got the backing from the manager and I can step up and perform.’”

Shift in Location and Squad Decisions

After playing the initial matches of the series at the South Island ground, a venue with unusually long boundaries, the visitors complete it on Thursday at the Auckland arena, a multi-use sports facility where the straight boundary at a short distance is among the most compact in the world. With changeable conditions and an new location they have dropped their usual practice of announcing their lineup ahead of time while they work out if their preferred team here will be the identical as the side that started the earlier fixtures.

Squad Adjustments for ODI Series

On Friday, they travel to Mount Maunganui and turn focus 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. Most newcomers arrived in the city on the same day but the scheduling of Archer’s Test match buildup implies he will arrive two days later, travelling with Mark Wood and Josh Tongue, two seamers who are also building towards the Tests in Australia but are excluded from the limited-overs team. As a result Archer will be absent for the first match at Bay Oval, the ground where he was racially abused on his sole prior visit, in 2019.