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

We were ready to show the Aussies just how far we'd come

The opening day of the Women's World Cup, a washout for all four games, was an anticlimax to say the least.

There so much adrenalin rushing through the players and it was disappointing to not get the second innings in and have a have a look at Australia's batting.

Some people might say that we were heading towards defeat with only 169-7 on the board, but we weren't looking at it that way.

There was a definite feeling in the dressing room that we were ready to show the Aussies just how far we'd come.

We've made great strides with our batting over the last two years, but we've also done that with our bowling and fielding and we wanted to show that.

Altough we collapsed in the middle-order, we did really well at the start of the innings and also at the end, so we were confident that a 170 was going to be competitive.

It wasn't the easiest pitch to bat on at Technikon Oval in Pretoria.

The ball was coming on quite nicely when the quicker bowlers were on, but after that the ball stayed quite low and it was tougher.

Taylor made 24 runs against Australia batting at number three

The Australians play with a very tight ring-field, so without as much pace on the ball you're always looking to either pierce the field or go over the top.

That's one of the ways they force you to take risks, and on that pitch it worked quite well.

But the no-result was not unsatisfactory, because we picked up three points.

And there were some teams who were playing lesser opponents that didn't get their full set of points because of the rain.

There are definitely positives to take out of the match, not least what we learned about the Aussie attack.

If we play them again in the semi or the final, we can draw on the knowledge of where they set their fields and what areas their bowlers target. They haven't had the same privilege.

We'll quite happily share the spoils with Australia and move onto the next game, which is against Sri Lanka on Thursday.

We're confident we will win, but the way we are looking at it is concentrating on our own preparation and not the other team.

We won't get to play most teams twice given the way the tournament is structured, so it's important to do our own thing and not worry about the opposition.

We haven't seen the Sri Lankans since the last World Cup, but they didn't score too many against India on Tuesday so our best should be good enough.

Forecasters said there was an 80% chance of rain on Wednesday and a 30% chance on Thursday.