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The English side's preparations for a hot, dry T20 World Cup in the subcontinent in February brought them on Wednesday to a cool, drizzly New Zealand's largest city, where they were forced to hold the last training session before their third game against the Kiwis inside. It is not always obvious what role these bilateral series fulfill, what useful lessons could possibly be learned – but on this occasion, for at least a squad member, that is not an issue.

Tom Banton's Changed Position: From Opener to Lower Down

The cricketer says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the type of statement often repeated even by players who have long since scaled the pinnacle of their game, in his situation it is certainly accurate. After building his name as a top-order batter, mostly as an starting player, Banton suddenly finds himself a totally new position, coming in at the middle order. “There weren’t really too many conversations,” he said. “I just got brought me back into the squad and informed me, ‘Your role will be in the lower batting lineup now.’”

Prior to returning in the summer, 87% of Banton’s over 160 professional T20 appearances had been as an starting batsman, a further portion at third position and the remaining handful – but for seven balls at seventh spot in a T20 Blast game eight years ago – at No 4. If the team plan to keep him in this altered role he requires every possible opportunity to become accustomed to it, and he has already worked out one thing: “Batting in the middle order,” he concluded, “is a much tougher than opening.”

Varied Performances in the Tour

The player noted that “there’s going to be times where it comes off and it looks great and on other occasions where it fails”, and the first two games of the winter in the host nation have seen both outcomes. In the opener, he faced nine balls and made a low score before getting out to long-on; in the next game, he played a dozen balls, scored 29, and finished unbeaten.

Thoughts on Return and Development

This tour has seen Banton return to the nation in which he made his international debut in November 2019. Since then, he drifted back out of the side, had a short comeback in 2022 and then passed more than three years in the wilderness before returning for Harry Brook’s first T20 as skipper. “On the flight over, it was strange,” he said. “Time has passed when I started internationally. It feels like a lot has happened in that period. I’ve learned a lot about me. The period 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 Coaching Staff

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 figures out how best to grasp it. “Baz approached me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Head out and play your natural game.’ It’s nice to have that liberty,” Banton said. “I realize it’s just a brief comment 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 minor but for me it’s, ‘Alright, I’ve got the backing from the head coach and I can go out and perform.’”

Shift in Location and Squad Decisions

Following the first two games of the contest at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a venue with expansive playing area, England complete it on Thursday at Eden Park, a dual-purpose rugby and cricket ground where the field edge at 55m is among the shortest in the world. With uncertain weather and an unfamiliar venue they have abandoned their usual practice of revealing their team two days in advance while they determine if their ideal XI here will be the same as the one that started both previous games.

Squad Adjustments for One-Day Matches

Next, they move to Mount Maunganui 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 join the squad. Three of those players landed in the city on Wednesday but the scheduling of the bowler's Ashes preparations means he will arrive two days later, flying with two fellow bowlers, two seamers who are also building towards the longer format in Australia but are not in the limited-overs team. Consequently he will miss the first match at Bay Oval, the stadium where he was racially abused on his only previous appearance, in 2019.