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England's training sessions for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in India in February led them on Wednesday to a chilly, rainy New Zealand's largest city, where they were compelled to conduct the final training session before their next match against New Zealand indoors. It is not always obvious what role these two-team contests fulfill, 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 New Role: From Opener to Lower Down

The cricketer says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the type of statement regularly trotted out even by athletes who have long since scaled the peak of their sport, in his case it is certainly accurate. After forging his reputation as a frontline hitter, mostly as an starting player, Banton now occupies a totally new role, batting at five or six. “There weren’t really too many conversations,” he said. “I just got brought me back into the team and told, ‘Your role will be in the lower batting lineup now.’”

Before his recall in the summer, 87% of Banton’s 162 senior T20 innings had been as an opener, a further portion at No3 and the remaining handful – but for a brief stint at seventh spot in a domestic T20 game previously – at fourth place. If England plan to retain him in this new position he needs every possible opportunity to get used to it, and he has figured out a key point: “Playing down the order,” he concluded, “is a lot harder than opening.”

Mixed Results 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 tour in the host nation have seen one of each. In the opener, he faced a few deliveries and scored a low score before holing out to the deep fielder; in the next game, he faced a dozen balls, scored 29, and ended the innings not out.

Thoughts on Return and Development

The current series has witnessed Banton return to the nation in which he first played for his country in November 2019. Since then, he drifted back out of the side, made a brief return in recently and then spent more than three years in the sidelines before returning for the new captain's first T20 as England captain. “On the flight over, it was strange,” he said. “It was six years ago when I made my debut. It feels like a lot has happened in that period. I’ve learned a lot about myself. The few years after I got dropped from England was a tough time for me. I had a two- to three-year period where I was working myself out.”

Backing from Coaching Staff

And now, he has been assigned something new to tackle. Banton is grateful to have been given another chance, and also for Brendon McCullum’s ability to put him at ease while he works out how best to grasp it. “Baz approached me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Go out and play your natural game.’ It’s nice to have that freedom,” Banton said. “I realize it’s just a brief comment from the staff, but it gives me the support that if it doesn’t come off, it’s not a disaster. It’s something so minor but for me it’s, ‘OK, I’ve got the backing from the manager and I can go out and do it.’”

Venue Change and Team Selection

After playing the initial matches of the contest at the South Island ground, a venue with expansive playing area, England finish the series on Thursday at Eden Park, a dual-purpose sports facility where the field edge at a short distance is among the most compact in the sport. With changeable conditions and an new location they have dropped their recent habit of revealing their lineup ahead of time while they work out if their preferred team for this match will be the identical as the side that began both previous games.

Squad Adjustments for ODI Series

Next, they move to Mount Maunganui and shift attention to one-day internationals, with a somewhat changed squad: Jordan Cox, Zak Crawley and Phil Salt drop out, while four others come in. Three of those players arrived in the city on Wednesday but the timing of the bowler's Ashes preparations implies he will arrive later, travelling with two fellow bowlers, fast bowlers who are also preparing for the Tests in the away series but are excluded from the white-ball squad. 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.