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England's preparations for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in the subcontinent in February brought them on Wednesday to a chilly, rainy Auckland, where they were forced to hold the last training session ahead of their next match against New Zealand indoors. The purpose isn't always clear what purpose these bilateral series fulfill, what valuable insights could possibly be learned – but on this instance, for at least a squad member, that is not an issue.

Tom Banton's Changed Position: From Opener to Middle Order

Tom Banton says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the type of statement regularly trotted out even by athletes who have already reached the peak of their sport, in his situation it is undeniably true. After building his name as a top-order batter, primarily as an starting player, Banton suddenly finds himself a totally new role, coming in at the middle order. “There weren’t really too many discussions,” 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 162 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 domestic T20 game eight years ago – at fourth place. If England intend to keep him in this altered role he needs every chance to get used to it, and he has already worked out a key point: “Playing down the order,” he concluded, “is a lot harder than opening.”

Varied Performances in New Zealand

The player noted that “there’s going to be times where it works well and it looks great and other times where it fails”, and the first two games of the tour in the host nation have featured one of each. In the first, he faced a few deliveries and scored nine runs before holing out to long-on; in the second, he played a dozen balls, scored 29, and ended the innings unbeaten.

Thoughts on Comeback and Development

The current series has witnessed Banton return to the country in which he first played for his country in late 2019. Since then, he drifted back out of the side, had a short comeback in recently and then passed more than three years in the wilderness before returning for the new captain'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 occurred in that period. I've discovered a lot about me. The period after I got dropped from the national team was a difficult phase for me. I had a two- to three-year period where I was finding my way.”

Backing from Team Management

Currently, he has been given something new to tackle. Banton is grateful to have been offered a return, and also for Brendon McCullum’s skill to make him comfortable while he works out how best to seize the opportunity. “Baz approached me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Head out and play your natural game.’ It's reassuring to have that freedom,” Banton said. “I realize it’s just a brief comment from the staff, but it provides the backing that if it doesn’t come off, it’s not a disaster. It’s something so small but for me it’s, ‘Alright, I’ve got the backing from the manager and I can step up and do it.’”

Shift in Location and Squad Decisions

Following the first two games of the series at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a venue with unusually long boundaries, England finish the series on the next day at the Auckland arena, a dual-purpose rugby and cricket ground where the field edge at 55m is among the shortest in the world. With changeable conditions and an unfamiliar venue they have abandoned their usual practice of announcing their lineup ahead of time while they work out if their preferred team for this match will be the identical as the one that began both previous games.

Squad Adjustments for One-Day Matches

On Friday, they travel to Mount Maunganui and shift attention to one-day internationals, with a somewhat changed squad: Jordan Cox, Zak Crawley and Phil Salt are omitted, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith come in. Three of those players arrived in the city on Wednesday but the timing of the bowler's Test match buildup implies he will follow two days later, flying with Mark Wood and Josh Tongue, two seamers who are also preparing for the longer format in the away series but are excluded from the white-ball squad. Consequently 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.