By Claire Taylor England women's team at the World Cup

We played really well in our two warm-up games against South Africa and it's good that all the stuff we've been doing in practice is paying off.

Before coming to South Africa we did some good quality indoor sessions. The facilities at Loughborough enabled us to open up the net area and do a fair bit of scenario work.

It's the World Cup and we want to play to a high standard whoever we're facing

It enables batters and bowlers to have more control over what they're doing and you could see the difference, particularly in the second game when we batted first and knocked up 300 runs.

The middle phase of the innings was very controlled, we were very focused in our approach to taking the ones and twos because we knew that was the way for us to build a big total.

The Indians and West Indies were at Tuesday's game, so it was pleasing to put on a strong performance with a couple of the teams we're going to be playing in the World Cup watching.

For me personally, I'm happy to get two good knocks in early in the tour and on pitches that were quite different.

In the first match we were chasing and it was easier for me to plan the game out because I knew exactly how many we needed to get.

I probably wouldn't have got to 100 anyway as we only needed another eight runs when I was out [for 94] and I had no idea how many I'd made.

Stats don't really mean a lot to me and I was more disappointed I didn't stay in to the end and see the job through with Clare Connor, which is what I had set out my stall to do.

So far we've been based in chalets at the university complex in Potchefstroom.

We were keen to set up a good routine while we're here so early nights and early starts seem to be the order of the day.

It's all very well to be confident against lesser teams - but it's more important to be confident against the good teams and good players

We have a library of about 100 DVDs to work our way through and out here they have one sports channel devoted to football, so Beth [Morgan] and Romper, the other Clare Taylor, absolutely love it.

It is very important to switch off and now I'm getting a bit older I'm starting to recognise when I need to have some down time.

It's quite security conscious on this trip - it's become a joke that we've got 'Cagney and Lacey' following us around - and there are no opportunities to go off on your own and chill out, so my down time involves a bit of reading and listening to CDs.

We haven't really talked about our first World Cup game against Australia yet, that'll come in the next couple of days.

We have to see it as just another game, play to the best of our abilities and then we'll have a true measurement of how far we've come in the past two years.

All we can do out here is play the best we can as a team and as individuals and we'll come away with the right results.

We've been playing some really good cricket, we're working hard, as our psychologist puts it, on our recipes, and I think we've got those right.

We're going to play a variety of oppositions on a variety of pitches and I think we've got the skills and the team in place to win matches against all oppositions and in all conditions.

I'm quietly confident about this World Cup.