Claire Taylor's Tour Diary (Part 2)

The first match of the tour was last Friday against a young Canterbury side at Hagley park in Christchurch. The weather seems to favour travelling days over playing days; most of us wearing 2 pairs of trousers, 2 shirts and 2 jumpers to combat the wind and rain - "Michelin Man" eat your heart out. It was good to get out into the middle after 2 months indoors; I made some good runs, sharing a match winning partnership of over 150 runs with Arran Thompson.

We decamped down to Omaru where we would play the first match against the Kiwis. The scenery along the route was spectacular; snow-capped mountains to the right and clear blue sea on the left. We stopped for the obligatory C&A posed photo before arriving in Omaru early that afternoon.

That first match saw the worst of the weather that we have faced. The Kiwis batted first in a biting wind, rain and even hail and posted a big total with some aggressive batting. We were unable to reply in kind but were heartened by some good bowling from Sarah Collyer.

In the other 2 ODIs in Timaru we were unable to post big totals batting first, but take encouragement from improvements in our bowling and fielding. We know that come the World Cup we will need to be more aggressive with our batting and look to dominate early on as the Kiwis did. We are now back in Christchurch with a couple of days R&R in front of us; there are plans to head out of town on Sunday... in between gym sessions of course!!

Christchurch is building up well for the World Cup; there are banners out on the main streets and posters advertising the opening game between Australia, the defending champions and the host country, New Zealand. That match should be very interesting, I hope that the Kiwi girls have the courage to play against the Ozzies the same way they played against us!!