England captain Harry Brook insisted his side are content with building gradually into the tournament rather than peaking too soon, even as the two-time champions flirted with danger again in the T20 World Cup.

England have not quite hit top gear yet. They survived a scare against Nepal, went down to the West Indies on Saturday, and were pushed hard by Scotland, who looked set for a 180-plus total before being bowled out for 152.

The chase was anything but smooth. England were wobbling at 86 for 4, with Phil Salt, Jos Buttler and Brook himself dismissed for single-digit scores. It took a composed, unbeaten 63 from Tom Banton to guide them home by five wickets with 10 balls to spare.

Brook, however, suggested the lack of fluency could work in England's favour.

"We haven't quite made it as easy as we'd have liked so far in this competition, but hopefully we can have a slightly easier run, starting with Italy on Monday or whenever it is when we play. We haven't quite played our best cricket yet, but we're in a strong position," Brook said after the match.

"Things haven't seemed to have clicked so far yet, but you don't want to start that too early in competitions like this, and hopefully that can be the start of it against Italy when we play them in a couple of days."

Banton's innings stood out not just for its timing but for the maturity behind it. Traditionally a top-order dasher in domestic cricket, he has been asked to slot in at No. 4 to accommodate the established opening pair of Salt and Buttler.

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Brook made it clear that breaking up that partnership was never on the table.

"He's awesome against spin. His stats are up there as some of the best in the world, and you can't really break Joss and Salty up. I know that they haven't started the way that they'd have liked to, but their partnership at the top is phenomenal. We wanted to slide Bantz in there, and number four was only really the option," Brook said.

"He slid into that No. 4 all beautifully there and played the situation and the conditions perfectly, so he deserves all that success."

Known for his audacious reverse sweeps and hockey-style slaps, Banton was forced to rein in his attacking range as Scotland packed the off side to deny him his preferred areas. Instead, he recalibrated, finding different pockets of the ground and pacing the chase expertly.

Having captained him at the Under-19 level, Brook was not surprised.

"He's obviously matured as a player, as we've seen tonight. The way that he's chased that total down there, single-handedly really, with a couple of cameos in there with (Jacob) Bethel and Sam (Curran). But yeah, he's played it beautifully.

"Obviously, everybody in the world knows he's a very good reverse sweeper of it, so he's had to adapt his game a little bit to hitting different areas to stop them, because they're trying to stop him from hitting that reverse sweep. But he's a powerful player. He's got long levers. He can hit the ball out of any ground, and he's shown that tonight."

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