The challenge on this trip may be to rediscover the joys of decorum, for England have made more than a few mistakes where New Zealand are concerned in recent Test encounters. They haven't won a Test match in the country in six attempts since 2008 - and even then they had to come back from 0-1 down to win the series 2-1. And in their last-but-one encounter at Auckland in 2018, England were lucky to make it to 58 all out, after Trent Boult and Tim Southee had reduced them to a record-threatening 27 for 9 on the first morning of the series.
There's no getting away from it. Big numbers are expected of Dom Sibley, and for the first time in a long time, "balls faced" will be an acceptable benchmark as England pivot away from the "positive cricket" mantra preached by Trevor Bayliss, in favour of some old-school grit and grind at the top of the order. Sibley's technique is not among the purest in the game, but then neither is that of his opening partner Rory Burns - let alone Sir Alastair Cook's, the man whose boots England still need to fill.
And like Cook, some of Sibley's best shots are those that he chooses not to play. If he's leaving the ball well, everything else falls into place. His stats for Warwickshire in 2019 were immense - 1428 runs at 68.00 with five hundreds. That'll do nicely. There's time enough for Joe Root to reverse his mid-career dip, but where there was once a Big Four among contemporary Test batsmen, there's now clear daylight between the best and the rest. And with his Player-of-the-Tournament-winning exploits at the World Cup, New Zealand's captain, Kane Williamson, has cemented his right to be spoken of in the same breath as Virat Kohli and Steve Smith.
He was playing Test cricket throughout that improbably bowler-friendly tournament, calibrating every innings to the most minute degree, and gauging exactly how many runs his team needed to be competitive. And even though his home summer has been disrupted by a knee injury that led to his omission for the T20Is, he will surely not have mislaid that calculating mindset. There'll be no more valuable wicket than his.
New Zealand have resisted handing Lockie Ferguson a Test debut - and he has been released for domestic cricket - sticking to the tried and trusted trio of Tim Southee, Trent Boult and Neil Wagner supplemented by Mitchell Santner's left-arm spin and Colin de Grandhomme's medium-paced wobble.
England showed their hand last week with their selection for their first-class warm-up against New Zealand A in Whangarei and Joe Root confirmed the XI. Dom Sibley will debut alongside his fellow Surrey and Whitgift starlet, Sibley, with Ollie Pope embedded at No.6, 18 months after his first coming against India. The key selection is Sam Curran's left-arm seam (and No. 8 thumping) ahead of his fellow allrounder Chris Woakes, whose record with the Kookaburra didn't give the selectors much reason to consider him. Jofra Archer, such a ubiquitous presence for England already, is set to play his first overseas international.
The pitch looked a bit green with more than 24 hours of preparation still to go, but that may just have been a precaution to keep it from drying out in strong winds. Both sides say they expect it to deteriorate a little and offer a bit for spin. Both also reckon it may be tough to get the ball to swing, conventionally or otherwise.
