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England's preparations for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in the subcontinent in the coming month led 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 New Zealand indoors. The purpose isn't always clear what purpose these bilateral series fulfill, what useful lessons could possibly be learned – but on this instance, for at least one of the players, that is no concern.

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

Tom Banton says he is “continuing to develop”, and if it is the kind of line regularly trotted out even by players who have already reached the pinnacle of their game, in his case it is undeniably true. After forging his reputation as a top-order batter, mostly as an starting player, Banton now occupies a totally new role, coming in at the middle order. “There weren’t really too many discussions,” he said. “They simply brought me back into the squad and informed me, ‘You’re going to bat in the middle order now.’”

Before his recall in June, the vast majority 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 No 7 in a T20 Blast game eight years ago – at No 4. If England plan to retain him in this new position he needs every chance to become accustomed to it, and he has figured out a key point: “Batting in the middle order,” he surmised, “is a lot harder than opening.”

Mixed Results in the Tour

Banton said that “there’s going to be times where it works well and it looks great and other times where it doesn’t”, and the first two games of the tour in New Zealand have featured both outcomes. In the opener, he faced nine balls and made nine runs before getting out to the deep fielder; in the next game, he played 12 deliveries, scored 29, and finished not out.

Reflections on Return and Growth

This tour has witnessed Banton come back to the country in which he first played for his country in late 2019. Since then, he moved away of the team, had a short comeback in 2022 and then spent more than three years in the wilderness before coming back for the new captain's first T20 as England captain. “During the journey, it was weird,” he said. “It was six years ago when I made my debut. Seems a lot has happened in that time. I've discovered a lot about me. The period after I was left out from the national team was a tough time for me. I had a two- to three-year stretch where I was finding my way.”

Support from Coaching Staff

Currently, he has been given a fresh challenge to work out. Banton is grateful 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. “Baz 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 provides 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, ‘Alright, I’ve got the approval from the head coach and I can go out and do it.’”

Venue Change and Squad Decisions

After playing the first two games of the series at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a stadium with unusually long boundaries, England finish the series on the next day at Eden Park, a multi-use rugby and cricket ground where the straight boundary at a short distance is among the most compact in the sport. With changeable conditions and an new location they have dropped their usual practice of revealing their team ahead of time while they work out if their preferred team for this match will be the identical as the side that started the earlier fixtures.

Squad Adjustments for One-Day Matches

On Friday, they travel to the coastal town and turn focus to one-day internationals, with a slightly amended team: three players drop out, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith join the squad. Most newcomers landed in the city on Wednesday but the scheduling of the bowler's Ashes preparations means he will follow two days later, flying with two fellow bowlers, two seamers who are also preparing for the Tests in Australia but are not in the limited-overs team. As a result Archer will miss the first match at the venue, the ground where he was racially abused on his only previous appearance, in 2019.