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The English side's training sessions for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in India in the coming month brought them on midweek to a chilly, rainy New Zealand's largest city, where they were forced to conduct the final training session before their next match against New Zealand inside. It is not always obvious what purpose these bilateral series serve, what valuable insights could possibly be gained – but on this occasion, for at least one of the players, that is not an issue.

The Batter's New Role: Starting Batsman to Lower Down

Tom Banton says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the type of statement often repeated even by athletes who have long since scaled the pinnacle of their sport, in his situation 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, coming in at five or six. “There weren’t really too many discussions,” he said. “They simply brought me back into the team and told, ‘You’re going to bat in the lower batting lineup now.’”

Before his recall in the summer, the vast majority of Banton’s 162 senior T20 innings had been as an starting batsman, a further portion at No3 and the remaining handful – but for seven balls at seventh spot in a T20 Blast game previously – at No 4. If England plan to keep him in this altered role he requires every chance to become accustomed to it, and he has figured out a key point: “Batting in the middle order,” he surmised, “is a much tougher than starting the innings.”

Varied Performances in New Zealand

Banton said that “sometimes where it comes off and it appears brilliant and on other occasions where it doesn’t”, and the first two games of the tour in New Zealand have seen both outcomes. In the opener, he faced a few deliveries and made nine runs before holing out to the deep fielder; in the second, he played 12 deliveries, hit runs, and ended the innings unbeaten.

Thoughts on Comeback and Development

The current series has witnessed Banton return to the country in which he made his international debut in November 2019. After that, he moved away of the side, had a short comeback in 2022 and then spent a long period in the sidelines before returning for Harry Brook’s first T20 as England captain. “On the flight over, it was weird,” he said. “Time has passed when I started internationally. It feels like a lot has happened in that time. I’ve learned a lot about myself. The few years after I got dropped from England was a difficult phase for me. I had a two- to three-year stretch where I was finding my way.”

Support from Coaching Staff

Currently, he has been assigned a fresh challenge to tackle. Banton is thankful to have been given another chance, and also for the coach's ability to put him at ease while he figures out how best to grasp it. “The coach came up to me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Head out and play your natural game.’ It's reassuring to have that liberty,” Banton said. “I realize it’s only a small thing from the staff, but it provides the support that if it doesn't work, it’s not the end of the world. It is so minor but for me it’s, ‘Alright, I’ve got the approval from the manager and I can step up and do it.’”

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, the visitors finish the series on the next day at the Auckland arena, a dual-purpose rugby and cricket ground where the straight boundary at a short distance is among the most compact in the sport. With changeable conditions and an new location they have abandoned their usual practice of revealing their team ahead of time while they determine if their ideal XI for this match will be the same as the side that began both previous games.

Squad Adjustments for ODI Series

Next, they move to Mount Maunganui and shift attention to one-day internationals, with a slightly amended team: three players drop out, while four others come in. Three of those players landed in the city on Wednesday but the scheduling of Archer’s Ashes preparations means he will arrive later, flying with Mark Wood and Josh Tongue, two seamers who are also preparing for the longer format in the away series but are not in the white-ball squad. As a result he will be absent for the first match at the venue, the ground where he was subjected to abuse on his only previous appearance, in a few years back.