🔗 Share this article The English Team Delay Team Reveal for Upcoming T20 Match as Weather Compel Inside Training England's training sessions for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in India in the coming month led them on midweek to a cool, drizzly Auckland, where they were forced to conduct the last training session before their third game against New Zealand indoors. The purpose isn't always clear what purpose these two-team contests serve, what valuable insights could possibly be learned – but on this occasion, for at least one of the players, that is no concern. Tom Banton's New Role: From Opener to Lower Down Tom Banton says he is “continuing to develop”, 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 frontline hitter, mostly as an starting player, Banton suddenly finds himself a completely unfamiliar position, batting at the middle order. “I didn't have too many conversations,” he said. “I just got brought me back into the team and informed me, ‘You’re going to bat in the middle order now.’” Before his recall in the summer, 87% of Banton’s 162 senior T20 innings had been as an opener, another 8% at third position and the rest – but for a brief stint at seventh spot in a domestic T20 game previously – at fourth place. If the team intend to keep him in this altered role he requires every possible opportunity to get used to it, and he has already worked out one thing: “Batting in the middle order,” he concluded, “is a much tougher than opening.” Varied Performances in the Tour The player noted that “there’s going to be times where it works well and it appears brilliant and other times where it doesn’t”, and the first two games of the winter in the host nation have seen both outcomes. In the opener, he lasted nine balls and made nine runs before holing out to the deep fielder; in the second, he played 12 deliveries, hit runs, and ended the innings unbeaten. Thoughts on Return and Development This tour has seen Banton return to the nation in which he made his international debut in late 2019. After that, he moved away of the team, made a brief return in 2022 and then spent more than three years in the wilderness before returning for Harry Brook’s initial match as skipper. “During the journey, it was strange,” he said. “It was six years ago when I started internationally. It feels like a lot has happened in that time. I've discovered a lot about myself. 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.” Backing from Team Management And now, he has been assigned a fresh challenge to work out. Banton is grateful to have been given another chance, and also for the coach's ability to put him at ease while he works out how best to seize the opportunity. “Baz came up to me before [Monday’s second T20] and said, ‘Go out and express yourself.’ It’s nice to have that liberty,” Banton said. “I know it’s just a brief comment someone says, but it gives me 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, ‘OK, I’ve got the backing from the head coach and I can step up and perform.’” Shift in Location and Team Selection After playing the first two games of the series at the South Island ground, a stadium with expansive playing area, England complete it on Thursday at Eden Park, a multi-use sports facility where the straight boundary at a short distance is among the shortest in the sport. With changeable conditions and an new location they have dropped their usual practice of revealing their team two days in advance while they determine if their ideal XI here will be the identical as the one that began both previous games. Squad Adjustments for One-Day Matches Next, they travel to the coastal town and turn focus to one-day internationals, with a somewhat changed team: three players drop out, while Jofra Archer, Ben Duckett, Joe Root and Jamie Smith come in. Three of those players arrived in Auckland on the same day but the scheduling of Archer’s Ashes preparations means he will arrive later, flying with Mark Wood and Josh Tongue, two seamers who are also preparing for the longer format in the away series but are excluded from the white-ball squad. As a result he will miss the opening game at the venue, the ground where he was subjected to abuse on his only previous appearance, in 2019.