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England's training sessions for a hot, dry T20 World Cup in the subcontinent in the coming month brought them on Wednesday to a cool, drizzly Auckland, where they were compelled to conduct the last practice run ahead of their next match against the Kiwis inside. The purpose isn't always clear what role these two-team contests serve, what valuable insights could possibly be gained – but on this instance, for at least one of the players, that is no concern.

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

Tom Banton says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the kind of line regularly trotted out even by players who have long since scaled the pinnacle of their game, in his case it is certainly accurate. After building his name as a top-order batter, primarily as an opener, Banton suddenly finds himself a totally new position, batting at five or six. “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.’”

Prior to returning in June, the vast majority of Banton’s 162 professional T20 appearances had been as an opener, another 8% at third position and the remaining handful – but for a brief stint at seventh spot in a T20 Blast game eight years ago – at No 4. If England intend to keep him in this new position he needs every possible opportunity to get used to it, and he has figured out one thing: “Playing down the order,” he surmised, “is a lot harder than opening.”

Varied Performances in New Zealand

The player noted that “sometimes where it works well and it looks great and other times where it fails”, and the first two games of the winter in the host nation have seen one of each. In the first, he faced nine balls and scored nine runs before holing out to long-on; in the next game, he faced 12 deliveries, hit runs, and ended the innings not out.

Thoughts on Return and Growth

The current series has witnessed Banton return to the nation in which he made his international debut in late 2019. After that, he drifted back out of the side, had a short comeback in recently and then passed a long period in the sidelines before returning for Harry Brook’s initial match as skipper. “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 myself. 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 Coaching Staff

And now, he has been assigned something new 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. “The coach approached me before [Monday’s second T20] and said, ‘Head out and express yourself.’ It’s nice to have that freedom,” Banton said. “I realize it’s only a small thing someone says, but it gives me the support that if it doesn't work, it’s not a disaster. It’s something so small but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the backing from the head coach and I can go out and perform.’”

Shift in Location and Team Selection

After playing the first two games of the contest at the South Island ground, a venue with unusually long boundaries, England complete it on Thursday at Eden Park, a multi-use sports facility where the field edge at a short distance is among the most compact in the world. With changeable conditions and an unfamiliar venue they have dropped their recent habit of revealing their team ahead of time while they work out if their preferred team for this match will be the same as the one that began both previous games.

Squad Adjustments for One-Day Matches

On Friday, they move to Mount Maunganui and shift attention to one-day internationals, with a somewhat changed team: three players drop out, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith join the squad. Three of those players landed in Auckland on the same day but the scheduling of the bowler's Test match buildup implies he will follow two days later, flying with two fellow bowlers, two seamers who are also building towards the Tests in the away series but are excluded from the white-ball squad. Consequently Archer will miss the first match at Bay Oval, the ground where he was subjected to abuse on his only previous appearance, in a few years back.