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The English side's training sessions for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in India in February brought them on Wednesday to a cool, drizzly Auckland, where they were compelled to hold the final training session before their third game against the Kiwis inside. It is not always obvious what role these two-team contests fulfill, what valuable insights could possibly be gained – but on this instance, for at least one of the players, that is no concern.

The Batter's Changed Position: Starting Batsman to Middle Order

Tom Banton says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the kind of line regularly trotted out even by athletes who have long since scaled the peak of their sport, in his case it is undeniably true. After building his name as a frontline hitter, mostly as an opener, Banton suddenly finds himself a completely unfamiliar 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 middle order now.’”

Prior to returning in June, the vast majority of Banton’s over 160 professional T20 appearances had been as an starting batsman, a further portion at third position and the rest – but for seven balls at seventh spot in a domestic T20 game previously – at fourth place. If the team plan to retain him in this new position 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 much tougher than opening.”

Mixed Results in the Tour

Banton said that “sometimes where it comes off and it looks great and other times where it fails”, and the first two games of the winter in the host nation have seen one of each. In the first, he faced a few deliveries and scored a low score before holing out to the deep fielder; in the second, he played a dozen balls, hit runs, and finished unbeaten.

Thoughts on Return and Development

The current series has witnessed Banton return to the country in which he made his international debut in late 2019. After that, he drifted back out of the side, had a short comeback in recently and then spent a long period in the sidelines before coming back for the new captain's initial match as England captain. “On the flight over, it was strange,” he said. “Time has passed when I made my debut. It feels like a lot has happened in that period. I’ve learned a lot about me. The few years after I was left out from England was a difficult phase for me. I had a couple of years stretch where I was working myself out.”

Support from Team Management

Currently, he has been assigned something new to work out. Banton is thankful to have been offered a return, and also for the coach's skill to make him comfortable while he works out how best to grasp it. “The coach came up to me before [Monday’s second T20] and said, ‘Head out and express yourself.’ It’s nice to have that freedom,” 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, ‘Alright, I’ve got the approval from the manager and I can go out and perform.’”

Shift in Location and Squad Decisions

After playing the first two games of the contest at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a venue with expansive playing area, England finish the series on Thursday at Eden Park, a multi-use sports facility where the straight boundary at a short distance is among the most compact in the world. With uncertain weather and an new location they have abandoned their usual practice of announcing their lineup ahead of time while they determine if their preferred team for this match will be the identical as the side that started the earlier fixtures.

Upcoming Changes for ODI Series

Next, they travel to Mount Maunganui and turn focus to ODIs, with a slightly amended team: Jordan Cox, Zak Crawley and Phil Salt drop out, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith join the squad. Three of those players landed in the city on Wednesday but the scheduling of the bowler's Ashes preparations implies he will arrive later, flying with Mark Wood and Josh Tongue, two seamers who are also preparing for the Tests in the away series but are not in the limited-overs team. As a result he will miss the opening game at the venue, the ground where he was subjected to abuse on his only previous appearance, in 2019.