Lydia Greenway's exclusive KOS blog

In the first of an exclusive column for KOS Media, Kent and England all-rounder Lydia Greenway shares her experience of preparing for the ICC Women's World Cup.

THE ICC Women’s World Cup has been a long time coming for us. After being knocked out in the semi finals four years ago we feel we are a much improved outfit in all areas of our game.

Four of us have been lucky enough to continue our final preparations in Sydney where the World Cup will be hosted. Myself, Isa Guha, Beth Morgan and Holly Colvin have been playing grade cricket over here since October. It is a highly regarded league with several Australian internationals featuring in the teams.

Playing on the wickets and getting used to the conditions out here has been invaluable. The four of us have also been living together so training sessions have been brilliant.

The time has flown by and it’s hard to believe that the rest of the team have been here for six days already. Our first official game is on March 7 against Sri Lanka. Before that though we have three warm-up games, one of which was today against New South Wales who are state champions. Although they were missing key players, who have joined their Australian team mates on a camp in Canberra, they still put out a good team.

Our aim for this game was to hit the ground running; training over the last few days has increased with intensity so there were to be no excuses today. On a greenish wicket we were asked to bowl first which more than suited us. Nunny (Katherine Brunt) and Ish (Isa Guha) got us off to a great start and in no time at all we had them three down. New South Wales never really recovered and we had them all out for 99.

It was great to see our bowlers hitting their areas, especially Nunny who gave the batters next to nothing with a few balls whizzing around their ears every now and then. Our batters did a great job too with the openers putting on a stand of 59 before being retired to give others a bit of time at the crease.

All in all it was a pleasing win but we still know we are not 100 per cent yet and want to keep improving in each game we play. On Monday we face the Aussies in our first official warm-up game, so we’ll be preparing for that over the weekend.

Lydia Greenway will be exclusively blogging for KOS Media from Australia where the England women’s cricket team are challenging for the ICC Women’s World Cup.