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The English side's preparations for a hot, dry T20 World Cup in the subcontinent in the coming month brought them on Wednesday to a cool, drizzly New Zealand's largest city, where they were compelled to hold the final practice run before their next match against the Kiwis inside. The purpose isn't always clear what purpose these bilateral series serve, what useful lessons could possibly be learned – but on this occasion, for at least one of the players, that is not an issue.

Tom Banton's Changed Position: From Opener to Middle Order

Tom Banton says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the type of statement often repeated 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 frontline hitter, mostly as an starting player, Banton suddenly finds himself a totally new position, batting at the middle order. “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 lower batting lineup now.’”

Prior to returning in June, 87% of Banton’s over 160 professional T20 appearances had been as an starting batsman, another 8% at No3 and the rest – but for a brief stint at No 7 in a domestic T20 game eight years ago – at fourth place. If the team plan to keep him in this altered role he requires every chance to get used to it, and he has already worked out a key point: “Batting in the middle order,” he surmised, “is a lot harder than starting the innings.”

Varied Performances in the Tour

Banton said that “there’s going to be times where it comes off and it appears brilliant and other times where it fails”, and the initial matches of the winter in the host nation have seen one of each. In the opener, he faced nine balls and scored a low score before getting out to long-on; in the second, he played a dozen balls, hit runs, and finished not out.

Thoughts on Comeback and Development

The current series has seen Banton come back to the country in which he first played for his country in November 2019. After that, he moved away of the team, made a brief return in 2022 and then spent a long period in the sidelines before returning for the new captain's first T20 as skipper. “During the journey, it was weird,” he said. “Time has passed when I started internationally. Seems a lot has occurred in that period. I've discovered a lot about me. The period after I was left out from England was a difficult phase for me. I had a couple of years period where I was working myself out.”

Support from Team Management

And now, 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. “Baz came up to me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Go out and express yourself.’ It’s nice to have that liberty,” Banton said. “I know it’s only a small thing someone says, but it provides the support that if it doesn't work, it’s not a disaster. It is so small but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the approval from the head coach and I can step up and do it.’”

Shift in Location and Squad Decisions

Following the first two games of the series at the South Island ground, a stadium with unusually long boundaries, England finish the series on the next day at the Auckland arena, a dual-purpose sports facility where the field edge at 55m is among the most compact in the sport. With changeable conditions and an unfamiliar venue they have dropped their usual practice of announcing their team ahead of time while they determine if their preferred team here will be the same as the one that began both previous games.

Squad Adjustments for One-Day Matches

Next, they travel to Mount Maunganui and shift attention to ODIs, with a slightly amended squad: Jordan Cox, Zak Crawley and Phil Salt are omitted, while four others join the squad. Most newcomers landed in the city on the same day but the scheduling of Archer’s Test match buildup means he will arrive later, flying with Mark Wood and Josh Tongue, two seamers who are also building towards the longer format in the away series but are not in the white-ball squad. As a result Archer will miss the opening game at the venue, the stadium where he was subjected to abuse on his only previous appearance, in 2019.