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The English side's preparations for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in the subcontinent in the coming month brought them on midweek to a chilly, rainy Auckland, where they were compelled to hold the final training session ahead of their third game against New Zealand inside. It is not always obvious what purpose these two-team contests fulfill, what valuable insights 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: Starting Batsman to Lower Down

Tom Banton says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the type of statement regularly trotted out even by players who have long since scaled the peak of their game, in his situation it is certainly accurate. After building his name as a top-order batter, primarily as an opener, Banton now occupies a totally new role, coming in at five or six. “I didn't have too many discussions,” he said. “I just got brought me back into the squad and told, ‘You’re going to bat in the lower batting lineup now.’”

Before his recall in the summer, 87% of Banton’s 162 senior T20 innings had been as an starting batsman, another 8% at third position and the rest – but for seven balls at No 7 in a T20 Blast game eight years ago – at fourth place. If England intend to retain him in this new position he needs every chance to get used to it, and he has already worked out one thing: “Batting in the middle order,” he surmised, “is a lot harder than opening.”

Mixed Results in New Zealand

The player noted that “there’s going to be times where it comes off and it appears brilliant and other times where it doesn’t”, and the initial matches of the tour in the host nation have seen both outcomes. In the first, he lasted a few deliveries and scored a low score before getting out to long-on; in the next game, he played a dozen balls, hit runs, and ended the innings unbeaten.

Thoughts on Comeback and Development

The current series has witnessed Banton come back to the country in which he first played for his country in November 2019. Since then, he drifted back out of the team, made a brief return in 2022 and then passed more than three years in the wilderness before returning for Harry Brook’s first T20 as skipper. “During the journey, it was weird,” he said. “Time has passed when I started internationally. It feels like a lot has occurred in that period. I’ve learned a lot about me. The few years 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.”

Backing from Team Management

And now, he has been assigned a fresh challenge to tackle. Banton is thankful to have been offered a return, and also for Brendon McCullum’s ability to put him at ease while he works out how best to grasp it. “Baz came up to me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Head out and play your natural game.’ It's reassuring to have that liberty,” Banton said. “I know it’s just a brief comment someone says, but it provides the support 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 manager and I can go out and do it.’”

Venue Change and Squad Decisions

After playing the first two games of the series at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a venue with unusually long boundaries, England complete it on the next day at the Auckland arena, a dual-purpose sports facility where the straight boundary at a short distance is among the shortest in the world. With changeable conditions and an new location they have abandoned their recent habit of revealing their lineup two days in advance while they determine if their ideal XI here will be the identical as the side that started both previous games.

Upcoming Changes for One-Day Matches

On Friday, 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. Most newcomers landed in Auckland on Wednesday but the timing of the bowler's Test match buildup implies he will arrive two days later, travelling with Mark Wood and Josh Tongue, two seamers who are also preparing for the Tests in Australia but are excluded from the limited-overs team. Consequently he will be absent for the first match at the venue, the stadium where he was subjected to abuse on his sole prior visit, in 2019.