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England's preparations for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in India in the coming month led them on midweek to a chilly, rainy Auckland, where they were compelled to hold the final training session before their third game against the Kiwis inside. The purpose isn't always clear what role these two-team contests serve, what valuable insights could possibly be learned – but on this occasion, for at least a squad member, that is no concern.

Tom Banton's Changed Position: Starting Batsman to Middle Order

The cricketer says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the kind of line often repeated even by players who have already reached the peak of their sport, in his case it is undeniably true. After building his name as a frontline hitter, primarily as an starting player, Banton now occupies a completely unfamiliar role, coming in at five or six. “There weren’t really too many discussions,” he said. “They simply brought me back into the squad and told, ‘You’re going to bat in the middle order now.’”

Before his recall in June, the vast majority of Banton’s 162 senior T20 innings had been as an starting batsman, another 8% at No3 and the rest – but for a brief stint at No 7 in a T20 Blast game previously – at No 4. If the team intend to retain him in this new position he needs every possible opportunity to become accustomed to it, and he has already worked out one thing: “Playing down the order,” he concluded, “is a lot harder than starting the innings.”

Mixed Results in the Tour

The player noted that “there’s going to be times where it works well and it looks great and on other occasions where it fails”, and the first two games of the tour in the host nation have featured one of each. In the first, he faced nine balls and made a low score before holing out to the deep fielder; in the next game, he played a dozen balls, scored 29, and ended the innings not out.

Thoughts on Comeback and Growth

This tour has witnessed Banton return to the country in which he first played for his country in November 2019. Since then, he drifted back out of the team, made a brief return in recently and then passed more than three years in the wilderness before coming back for the new captain's initial match as skipper. “During the journey, it was weird,” he said. “Time has passed when I made my debut. Seems a lot has happened in that period. I’ve learned a lot about myself. The few years after I got dropped from England was a tough time for me. I had a two- to three-year stretch where I was working myself out.”

Support from Team Management

And now, he has been given a fresh challenge to work out. Banton is thankful to have been given another chance, and also for Brendon McCullum’s skill to make him comfortable while he figures out how best to grasp it. “The coach approached me before [Monday’s second T20] and said, ‘Head out and express yourself.’ 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 a disaster. It’s something so small but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the approval from the head coach and I can go out and do it.’”

Shift in Location and Squad Decisions

Following the first two games of the contest at the South Island ground, a stadium with unusually long boundaries, the visitors complete it on the next day at Eden Park, a dual-purpose sports facility where the straight boundary at 55m is among the shortest in the world. With uncertain weather and an unfamiliar venue they have dropped their recent habit of announcing their team ahead of time while they determine if their ideal XI here will be the identical as the one that began the earlier fixtures.

Upcoming Changes for ODI Series

On Friday, they move to the coastal town and shift attention to ODIs, with a somewhat changed team: Jordan Cox, Zak Crawley and Phil Salt drop out, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith come in. Three of those players arrived in the city on Wednesday but the scheduling of the bowler's Ashes preparations means he will follow two days later, travelling with two fellow bowlers, fast bowlers who are also preparing for the Tests in the away series but are excluded from the white-ball squad. Consequently he will miss the first match at Bay Oval, the ground where he was subjected to abuse on his sole prior visit, in a few years back.