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England's training sessions for a hot, dry T20 World Cup in India in the coming month led them on Wednesday to a chilly, rainy New Zealand's largest city, where they were compelled to conduct the final training session before their third game against New Zealand inside. The purpose isn't always clear what purpose these bilateral series serve, what valuable insights could possibly be gained – but on this instance, for at least one of the players, that is not an issue.

The Batter's New Role: From Opener to Middle Order

Tom Banton says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the kind of line often repeated even by athletes who have long since scaled the pinnacle of their sport, in his case it is certainly accurate. After forging his reputation as a top-order batter, primarily as an starting player, Banton now occupies a completely unfamiliar position, coming in at five or six. “There weren’t really too many conversations,” he said. “I just got brought me back into the team and informed me, ‘Your role will be in the middle order now.’”

Before his recall 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 rest – but for seven balls at seventh spot in a T20 Blast game eight years ago – at No 4. If the team intend to retain him in this new position he requires every chance to become accustomed to it, and he has figured out one thing: “Batting in the middle order,” he surmised, “is a much tougher than starting the innings.”

Mixed Results in New Zealand

Banton said that “sometimes 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 lasted a few deliveries and made nine runs before getting out to long-on; in the next game, he played 12 deliveries, hit runs, and ended the innings unbeaten.

Thoughts on Comeback and Growth

The current series has seen Banton come back to the nation in which he first played for his country in November 2019. After that, he moved away of the team, had a short comeback in 2022 and then spent more than three years in the sidelines before returning for the new captain's first T20 as skipper. “On the flight over, it was strange,” he said. “Time has passed when I made my debut. It feels like a lot has occurred in that period. I’ve learned a lot about myself. The period after I got dropped from the national team was a difficult phase for me. I had a couple of years stretch where I was finding my way.”

Backing from Team Management

And now, he has been assigned something new to work out. 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 [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 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, ‘Alright, I’ve got the backing from the head coach and I can step up and perform.’”

Venue Change and Team Selection

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 rugby and cricket ground where the straight boundary at a short distance is among the most compact in the world. With changeable conditions and an new location they have abandoned their usual practice of announcing 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.

Upcoming Changes for ODI Series

On Friday, they move to Mount Maunganui and shift attention to ODIs, with a slightly amended team: Jordan Cox, Zak Crawley and Phil Salt drop out, while four others join the squad. Three of those players landed in the city on Wednesday but the timing of Archer’s Test match buildup means he will arrive two days later, flying with two fellow bowlers, two seamers who are also preparing for the longer format in Australia but are excluded from the limited-overs team. As a result Archer will be absent for the first match at Bay Oval, the ground where he was racially abused on his sole prior visit, in a few years back.