Kent opener Joe Denly writes for the KM Group from the England Lions' tour in New Zealand

Well, we’ve arrived in New Zealand although for a while it did feel like we’d never get here.

The flight took over 24 hours and at times I thought it would never end. I was sat between Gareth Batty and Rob Key but there wasn’t much conversation coming from either of them.

‘Bats’ kept putting on a film and then falling to sleep after the first 20 minutes while ‘Keysie’, a veteran of long haul flights, spent the whole journey with his eyes glued to his laptop watching Series One of 24. I think he managed to get through 21 consecutive episodes breaking only to visit the loo and have the occasional bite to eat – a quite astonishing effort and one the lads have yet to let him live down!

But we’re here now and my first impressions of New Zealand have been all pleasant. For the first few weeks we’re going to be based in Christchurch in the South Island. I’d been told by friends that it’s like England in many ways and they’re not wrong.

The temperature is warm but not too hot and the countryside is green with rolling hills dotted with thousands of sheep.

We had the first day off to give our bodies the chance to get used to the fact that we’re now 13 hours ahead of the UK. I told myself all I had to do for the first day was stay awake for as long as possible and then sleep for as long as possible – it can’t be that hard surely!

Fighting every urge to head to bed, I headed out into town with a few of the lads to have a look around. We ended up finding an arcade that looks like becoming our second home. As you can imagine most professional sportspeople are competitive and I’m no different.

After training on each of the last two days, Rob Key, Ravi Bopara, Liam Plunkett and myself have all gone back to the hotel, showered, changed and headed straight for the arcade. We’ve got three main games, basketball, Daytona and a shooting game and have started a league to see who’s the best – needless to say I am top of the league at the moment!

We are here for more serious business, though, and after our first day off it was straight down to training. The ground is around 30 minutes from the hotel and the facilities are excellent.

They’ve had quite a bit of rain in these parts over the past few weeks so the tracks are green and extremely ‘juicy’ – much to the delight of our fast bowlers!

The local net bowlers have been good and in plentiful supply so I’ve been able to practice my batting for four hours a day.

We’ve got our first match coming up this weekend against an Emerging New Zealand XI and I’m hoping I can impress the coaches and get selected for the team. I want to play for the England Test team and this tour will hopefully be a real stepping stone toward doing that – so here’s hoping.