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England's training sessions for a hot, dry T20 World Cup in India in February brought them on midweek to a cool, drizzly New Zealand's largest city, where they were forced to conduct the last practice run ahead of their next match against the Kiwis inside. It is not always obvious what role these two-team contests fulfill, what useful lessons could possibly be gained – but on this instance, for at least one of the players, 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 players who have already reached the peak of their game, in his case it is certainly accurate. After building his name as a frontline hitter, mostly as an starting player, Banton suddenly finds himself a completely unfamiliar position, batting at the middle order. “I didn't have too many conversations,” he said. “I just got brought me back into the squad and informed me, ‘You’re going to bat in the middle order now.’”

Before his recall in June, the vast majority of Banton’s 162 senior T20 innings had been as an opener, another 8% at No3 and the remaining handful – but for a brief stint at No 7 in a domestic T20 game eight years ago – at fourth place. If the team intend to retain him in this altered role he requires every possible opportunity to become accustomed to it, and he has figured out a key point: “Batting in the middle order,” he concluded, “is a much tougher than opening.”

Mixed Results 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 featured both outcomes. In the first, he lasted nine balls and made a low score before holing out to long-on; in the next game, he played a dozen balls, scored 29, and finished unbeaten.

Thoughts on Comeback and Development

The current series has witnessed Banton come back to the nation in which he first played for his country in late 2019. Since then, he moved away of the team, had a short comeback in recently and then passed a long period in the sidelines before coming back for the new captain's first T20 as skipper. “On the flight over, it was weird,” he said. “It was six years ago when I made my debut. It feels like a lot has occurred in that period. I've discovered 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 period where I was working myself out.”

Support from Team Management

Currently, he has been given a fresh challenge to work out. Banton is thankful to have been given another chance, and also for the coach's skill to put him at ease while he works out how best to grasp it. “Baz approached me before [Monday’s second T20] and said, ‘Go out and play your natural game.’ It’s nice to have that liberty,” Banton said. “I realize it’s only a small thing someone says, but it gives me the backing that if it doesn't work, it’s not the end of the world. It is so small but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the approval from the head coach and I can step up and perform.’”

Shift in Location and Squad Decisions

Following the initial matches of the series at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a stadium with unusually long boundaries, England complete it on Thursday at the Auckland arena, a multi-use sports facility where the field edge at a short distance is among the shortest in the world. With changeable conditions and an unfamiliar venue they have abandoned their usual practice of announcing their team two days in advance while they determine if their preferred team for this match will be the identical as the side that started both previous games.

Squad Adjustments for ODI Series

Next, they move to Mount Maunganui and turn focus to one-day internationals, with a somewhat changed team: three players drop out, 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 arrive two days later, flying with Mark Wood and Josh Tongue, fast bowlers who are also building towards the longer format in Australia but are excluded from the limited-overs team. As a result he will be absent for the first match at the venue, the stadium where he was racially abused on his only previous appearance, in a few years back.