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The English side's preparations for a hot, dry T20 World Cup in India in February led them on Wednesday to a cool, drizzly Auckland, where they were forced to conduct the last training session before their next match against New Zealand inside. The purpose isn't always clear what purpose these two-team contests serve, what valuable insights could possibly be gained – but on this instance, for at least a squad member, that is not an issue.

Tom Banton's New Role: Starting Batsman to Middle Order

Tom Banton 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 peak of their sport, in his case it is certainly accurate. 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 conversations,” he said. “They simply brought me back into the squad and told, ‘Your role will be in the middle order now.’”

Prior to returning in June, the vast majority of Banton’s 162 senior T20 innings had been as an starting batsman, a further portion at third position and the remaining handful – but for seven balls at seventh spot in a T20 Blast game previously – at No 4. If the team intend to keep him in this altered role he requires every possible opportunity to get used to it, and he has figured out a key point: “Batting in the middle order,” he surmised, “is a lot harder than starting the innings.”

Varied Performances in New Zealand

Banton said that “sometimes where it works well and it looks great and on other occasions where it doesn’t”, and the first two games of the tour in New Zealand have featured one of each. In the first, he faced nine balls and scored nine runs before holing out to long-on; in the second, he faced a dozen balls, hit runs, and ended the innings not out.

Reflections on Comeback and Growth

This tour has witnessed Banton come back to the nation in which he made his international debut in November 2019. Since then, he drifted back out of the side, made a brief return in recently and then spent a long period in the sidelines before returning for the new captain's first T20 as England captain. “During the journey, it was weird,” he said. “Time has passed when I made my debut. It feels like a lot has happened in that time. I've discovered a lot about me. The period after I got dropped from England was a difficult phase for me. I had a couple of years stretch where I was finding my way.”

Support from Team Management

And now, he has been assigned something new to tackle. Banton is grateful 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 approached me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Head out and express yourself.’ It’s nice to have that freedom,” Banton said. “I know it’s just a brief comment from the staff, but it provides the backing that if it doesn't work, it’s not a disaster. It’s something so minor but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the approval from the head coach and I can go out and do it.’”

Venue Change and Squad Decisions

Following the first two games of the contest at the South Island ground, a stadium with expansive playing area, the visitors finish the series on the next day at Eden Park, a multi-use rugby and cricket ground where the straight boundary at 55m is among the most compact in the world. With uncertain weather and an unfamiliar venue they have dropped their usual practice of revealing their lineup two days in advance while they work out if their ideal XI for this match will be the identical as the one that started the earlier fixtures.

Squad Adjustments for ODI Series

Next, they move to Mount Maunganui and turn focus to one-day internationals, with a somewhat changed squad: three players drop out, while four others join the squad. Most newcomers landed in the city on Wednesday but the timing of the bowler's Test match buildup means he will follow later, travelling with two fellow bowlers, two seamers who are also building towards the longer format in Australia but are not in the limited-overs team. Consequently he will miss the first match at the venue, the stadium where he was subjected to abuse on his only previous appearance, in a few years back.