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The English side's preparations for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in the subcontinent in the coming month brought them on midweek to a cool, drizzly New Zealand's largest city, where they were forced to conduct the final training session before their next match against New Zealand indoors. The purpose isn't always clear what purpose these two-team contests serve, what useful lessons could possibly be gained – but on this occasion, for at least a squad member, that is no concern.

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

The cricketer says he is “continuing to develop”, and if it is the kind of line often repeated even by athletes who have long since scaled the pinnacle of their game, in his case it is certainly accurate. After forging his reputation as a top-order batter, primarily as an starting player, Banton suddenly finds himself a totally new position, coming in at five or six. “I didn't have too many conversations,” he said. “They simply brought me back into the squad and informed me, ‘Your role will be in the middle order now.’”

Prior to returning in June, the vast majority of Banton’s over 160 senior T20 innings had been as an opener, another 8% at No3 and the remaining handful – but for seven balls at seventh spot in a domestic T20 game eight years ago – at No 4. If the team plan to keep him in this altered role he needs every chance to get used to it, and he has figured out a key point: “Playing down the order,” he concluded, “is a lot harder than starting the innings.”

Varied Performances in New Zealand

The player noted that “there’s going to be times where it comes off and it appears brilliant and on other occasions where it doesn’t”, and the initial matches of the tour in New Zealand have featured both outcomes. In the first, he faced nine balls and made a low score before holing out to long-on; in the second, he faced 12 deliveries, hit runs, and finished unbeaten.

Reflections on Comeback and Development

The current series has seen Banton return to the nation in which he first played for his country in November 2019. Since then, he moved away of the side, made a brief return in 2022 and then spent more than three years in the wilderness before coming back for the new captain's initial match as England captain. “On the flight over, it was weird,” he said. “Time has passed when I started internationally. Seems a lot has happened in that period. I’ve learned a lot about myself. The period 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.”

Backing from Coaching Staff

Currently, he has been assigned something new to work out. Banton is thankful to have been given another chance, and also for the coach's skill to make him comfortable 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 express yourself.’ It’s nice to have that freedom,” Banton said. “I know it’s only a small thing from the staff, but it gives me the support that if it doesn’t come off, it’s not a disaster. It’s something so minor but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the backing from the manager and I can go out and do it.’”

Shift in Location and Team Selection

After playing the first two games of the series at the South Island ground, a stadium with unusually long boundaries, England complete it on the next day at the Auckland arena, a dual-purpose rugby and cricket ground where the straight boundary at 55m is among the most compact in the world. With uncertain weather and an new location they have dropped their recent habit of revealing their team ahead of time while they determine if their preferred team here will be the same as the side that began the earlier fixtures.

Squad Adjustments for One-Day Matches

Next, they move to the coastal town and shift attention to ODIs, with a somewhat changed squad: Jordan Cox, Zak Crawley and Phil Salt drop out, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith join the squad. Most newcomers arrived in the city on the same day but the timing of the bowler's Test match buildup implies he will arrive two days later, travelling with two fellow bowlers, fast bowlers who are also building towards the longer format in the away series but are not in the limited-overs team. As a result Archer will miss the first match at Bay Oval, the ground where he was subjected to abuse on his sole prior visit, in 2019.