🔗 Share this article

The English side's training sessions for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in India in February led them on Wednesday to a cool, drizzly New Zealand's largest city, where they were forced to conduct the final practice run before their next match against the Kiwis inside. The purpose isn't always clear what role these two-team contests serve, what useful lessons 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 Middle Order

Tom Banton says he is “continuing to develop”, and if it is the type of statement regularly trotted out even by athletes who have long since scaled the peak of their game, in his case it is certainly accurate. After building his name as a frontline hitter, mostly as an opener, Banton suddenly finds himself a completely unfamiliar position, batting at the middle order. “I didn't have too many discussions,” he said. “I just got brought me back into the team and told, ‘Your role will be in the middle order now.’”

Prior to returning in the summer, 87% of Banton’s over 160 senior T20 innings had been as an starting batsman, a further portion at No3 and the rest – but for a brief stint at No 7 in a domestic T20 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: “Playing down the order,” he surmised, “is a much tougher than opening.”

Mixed Results in the Tour

Banton said that “there’s going to be times where it comes off and it appears brilliant and on other occasions where it fails”, and the initial matches of the winter in the host nation have featured one of each. In the opener, he lasted nine balls and made nine runs before holing out to the deep fielder; in the next game, he played 12 deliveries, scored 29, and finished unbeaten.

Reflections on Return and Growth

This tour has seen Banton return to the country in which he first played for his country in late 2019. Since then, he moved away of the team, made a brief return in recently and then spent more than three years in the wilderness before coming back for Harry Brook’s initial match as England captain. “On the flight over, it was strange,” he said. “It was six years ago when I started internationally. Seems a lot has happened in that period. I’ve learned a lot about myself. The period after I got dropped from England was a difficult phase for me. I had a couple of years period where I was working myself out.”

Backing from Coaching Staff

And now, he has been assigned a fresh challenge to tackle. Banton is grateful to have been given another chance, and also for the coach's skill to put him at ease while he figures out how best to seize the opportunity. “The coach came up to me before [Monday’s second T20] and said, ‘Go out and play your natural game.’ It's reassuring to have that freedom,” Banton said. “I realize it’s just a brief comment someone says, but it provides the backing that if it doesn’t come off, it’s not the end of the world. It’s something so small but for me it’s, ‘Alright, I’ve got the backing from the head coach and I can step up and perform.’”

Venue Change and Team Selection

Following the initial matches of the contest at the South Island ground, a stadium with unusually long boundaries, the visitors finish the series on Thursday at the Auckland arena, a multi-use rugby and cricket ground where the field edge at 55m is among the shortest in the sport. With uncertain weather and an new location they have dropped their recent habit of revealing their team ahead of time while they determine if their ideal XI here will be the identical as the one that started both previous games.

Upcoming Changes for One-Day Matches

On Friday, they travel to the coastal town and shift attention to ODIs, with a slightly amended team: three players are omitted, while four others join the squad. Most newcomers arrived in the city on the same day but the timing of Archer’s Ashes preparations implies he will arrive later, flying with Mark Wood and Josh Tongue, two seamers who are also preparing for the longer format in Australia but are not in the limited-overs team. As a result Archer will be absent for the opening game at Bay Oval, the stadium where he was subjected to abuse on his sole prior visit, in a few years back.