Happy and relieved

The players came into this tournament knowing qualification was an absolute must for South Africa, so I'm almost as relieved as I am happy that we are going to the Women's World Cup in 2009.

I expected a slightly tougher game against Ireland in our semi-final, but once again we put in an outstanding team effort, with our bowling attack in absolutely superb form.

We've obviously had some interesting matches, against teams of very different standards, but everybody has to start somewhere and I hope teams such as Papua New Guinea and Bermuda would have learned some lessons.

I think the Papua New Guinea opening bowlers have been one of the most difficult attacks we have faced this past week. If they continue to work on their game, there is no reason why they can't be more competitive in the future.

For us, there have been many star performers, although I have been really proud of the way Olivia Anderson has adapted to international cricket.

Given she made her debut in the tournament, to capture two Player-of-the-Match awards says something about her character and her ability.It's great to have her as part of my team.

I was personally pleased to finally score my first ODI hundred against Netherlands - it's been a long time coming and it would be great to get a couple more in the future.

The team were delighted to be invited to Newlands on Friday night as guests of Cricket South Africa, and spend an evening in the President's Suite. People there seemed genuinely delighted for us that we have made it to the World Cup and were interested in the results of our matches.

It's great to know people in South Africa are behind us and I was excited to hear Graeme Smith and the boys in Bangladesh have been following our progress. It really means a lot to me and the team to get a congratulatory message from them during their Test match.

We need to take this support forward and transform it into generating even greater media interest in the sport. It's not always easy to generate coverage of women's cricket in South Africa but it has been great to see the newspapers, radio and television taking interest and pride in our performances.

It would be brilliant to get to a situation where we can use this exposure to get lots of girls wanting to play the game and for them to beg their parents to take them to watch some cricket and learn from their heroes.

We have 12 months to prepare for the ICC Women's World Cup in Australia and we have a lot of work to do if we want to compete with the very best.

Given most of us have full-time jobs, it is hard to fit in playing and training around our work, but we have all made a commitment to do well for South Africa and with that commitment comes a number of sacrifices.

Hopefully we'll have an opportunity to play some Twenty20 cricket. We don't have much experience of this in South Africa, but the skills you pick up in the format will really help us when we are playing in the World Cup.

The teams that have played more Twenty20s than us seem to have really benefitted from their experiences and are applying the skills picked up in that format of cricket to the 50-over game. We know this is an area that we need to work on and I'm really looking forward to playing alongside some of the other girls in our domestic Twenty20 competition later this year.

The tour to England in a few months' time will be a good measure of how far we have to go to be competitive at next year's Women's World Cup, but all I can ask of my team is to show the same levels of dedication and commitment they have in the build-up to and during this event.

If we keep up the level of performance we have shown this week, then I am sure we should be able to beat Pakistan in the final of this tournament.