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The English side's preparations for a hot, dry T20 World Cup in India in the coming month brought them on Wednesday to a chilly, rainy Auckland, where they were compelled to hold the last practice run before their third game against the Kiwis indoors. The purpose isn't always clear what purpose these two-team contests fulfill, what useful lessons could possibly be learned – but on this instance, for at least one of the players, that is not an issue.

Tom Banton's New Role: From Opener to Lower Down

The cricketer says he is “continuing to develop”, and if it is the type of statement often repeated even by athletes who have long since scaled the pinnacle of their game, in his case it is certainly accurate. After forging his reputation as a top-order batter, primarily as an opener, Banton suddenly finds himself a completely unfamiliar role, coming in at the middle order. “There weren’t really too many conversations,” he said. “I just got brought me back into the team and informed me, ‘You’re going to bat in the middle order now.’”

Prior to returning in the summer, the vast majority of Banton’s over 160 professional T20 appearances had been as an starting batsman, another 8% at third position and the rest – but for a brief stint at No 7 in a domestic T20 game previously – at fourth place. If the team plan to keep him in this altered role he requires every chance to become accustomed to it, and he has already worked out a key point: “Batting in the middle order,” he surmised, “is a lot harder than opening.”

Mixed Results in the Tour

Banton said that “sometimes where it works well and it looks great and other times where it fails”, and the initial matches of the winter in New Zealand have featured one of each. In the opener, he faced a few deliveries and scored nine runs before getting out to long-on; in the second, he played 12 deliveries, scored 29, and finished unbeaten.

Reflections on Return and Growth

This tour has seen Banton come back to the nation in which he first played for his country in November 2019. After that, he drifted back out of the side, made a brief return in recently 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 weird,” he said. “It was six years ago when I made my debut. Seems a lot has occurred in that time. I've discovered a lot about me. The few years after I was left out from the national team was a difficult phase for me. I had a two- to three-year period where I was working myself out.”

Backing from Team Management

Currently, he has been given a fresh challenge to tackle. Banton is grateful to have been offered a return, and also for the coach's ability to make him comfortable while he works out how best to grasp it. “The coach 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 provides the backing that if it doesn’t come off, it’s not a disaster. It is so minor but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the approval from the head coach and I can go out and perform.’”

Shift in Location and Squad Decisions

After playing the first two games of the contest at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a venue with unusually long boundaries, England finish the series on Thursday at the Auckland arena, a multi-use sports facility where the straight boundary at 55m is among the most compact in the sport. With uncertain weather and an new location they have dropped their recent habit of revealing their team two days in advance while they determine if their preferred team for this match will be the same as the side that began both previous games.

Upcoming Changes for ODI Series

On Friday, they travel to Mount Maunganui and shift attention to ODIs, with a somewhat changed team: Jordan Cox, Zak Crawley and Phil Salt drop out, while four others join the squad. Most newcomers arrived in Auckland on the same day but the timing of the bowler's Ashes preparations implies he will arrive two days later, flying with two fellow bowlers, fast bowlers who are also building towards the longer format in the away series but are not in the white-ball squad. Consequently Archer will be absent for the opening game at Bay Oval, the ground where he was racially abused on his only previous appearance, in a few years back.