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The English side's training sessions for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in the subcontinent in the coming month brought them on midweek to a cool, drizzly New Zealand's largest city, where they were compelled to conduct the final practice run ahead of their third game against New Zealand indoors. It is not always obvious what purpose these bilateral series serve, what valuable insights could possibly be learned – but on this instance, for at least one of the players, that is not an issue.

Tom Banton's Changed Position: Starting Batsman to Lower Down

Tom Banton says he is “continuing to develop”, and if it is the type of statement regularly trotted out even by athletes who have long since scaled the pinnacle of their sport, in his case it is undeniably true. After building his name as a top-order batter, mostly as an opener, 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 team and told, ‘You’re going to bat in the middle order now.’”

Prior to returning in June, the vast majority of Banton’s 162 professional T20 appearances had been as an opener, a further portion at third position and the rest – but for seven balls at seventh spot 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 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 “sometimes where it comes off and it looks great and on other occasions where it doesn’t”, and the first two games of the tour in New Zealand have seen one of each. In the first, he lasted nine balls and scored nine runs before getting out to the deep fielder; in the next game, he faced a dozen balls, hit runs, and ended the innings not out.

Thoughts on Return and Growth

This tour has seen Banton come back to the nation in which he made his international debut in November 2019. Since then, he drifted back out of the team, made a brief return in 2022 and then passed more than three years in the wilderness before coming back for Harry Brook’s initial match as skipper. “During the journey, it was strange,” he said. “Time has passed when I started internationally. It feels like a lot has occurred 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 finding my way.”

Support from Coaching Staff

And now, he has been given something new to tackle. Banton is grateful 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 [the recent game] and said, ‘Head out and express yourself.’ It’s nice to have that freedom,” Banton said. “I realize it’s only a small thing from the staff, but it provides the support that if it doesn’t come off, it’s not a disaster. It’s something so minor but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the approval from the manager and I can step up and do it.’”

Venue Change and Team Selection

Following the initial matches of the series at the South Island ground, a stadium with expansive playing area, England finish the series on Thursday 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 revealing their lineup ahead of time while they determine if their ideal XI here will be the same as the one that started the earlier fixtures.

Squad Adjustments for One-Day Matches

On Friday, they travel to Mount Maunganui and shift attention to ODIs, with a slightly amended squad: three players are omitted, while four others join the squad. Three of those players landed in the city on Wednesday but the scheduling of Archer’s Ashes preparations implies he will follow two days later, travelling with two fellow bowlers, fast bowlers who are also preparing for the Tests in Australia but are not in the limited-overs team. As a result Archer will miss the opening game at Bay Oval, the ground where he was racially abused on his sole prior visit, in 2019.