Tour dairy

THE weather is still awful, we lost another friendly and the New Zealanders have nicked all the top rooms!

We arrived at Lincoln University, our base for the next month, yesterday.

All the teams are staying here but some seem to have used home advantage for their own gain!

To be fair, the accommodation we are in is very nice.

All the teams have their own block but we hear the New Zealand squad all have double rooms with en suite and televisions! Nice, if you can get it!

Last Wednesday we played the last of our three one-day warm-up matches against New Zealand.

We lost. Basically we didn't get a high enough score -- I only managed six -- and we struggled to keep them low, but the conditions were really difficult.

Paul Farbrace (the England coach) gave us a couple of days off in Christchurch over the weekend so we took time out to do a bit of shopping, take in the amazing scenery and go swimming with dolphins.

We drove quite a way out of town and the countryside is just beautiful. We swam with the dolphins for about an hour and it was an amazing experience.

Other than that we just generally relaxed for a few days and it did us good. Team morale is very high and we are all confident about our chances in the World Cup despite the three defeats to New Zealand in the warm up matches.

We were still getting acclimatised when we played those games and we are sure when it comes to the real thing it will be a different story.

We had the opening ceremony today. It poured down with rain, for a change.

We were all there in our smart ECB blazers and skirts all huddled under a marquee just trying to keep dry. Honestly, the weather over here isn't much better than it is in England!

We can't wait for our World Cup to start now. Our first game is on Thursday but in the meantime we are hanging out in the recreation block of the University, playing pool and squash and generally messing about trying to keep ourselves occupied.

We are spending quite a bit of time with the South Africans. We played them in a Test series in England earlier this year, when I made my England debut, so we are quite familiar with them.

We play them on Saturday in our second World Cup game, but knowing them personally won't make any difference. We will go out there and there will be a fierce rivalry.

We will want to beat them.

We play Holland in our opening game on Thursday. We would be expected to win that one but we are not taking anything for granted. You can't underestimate anybody in this competition.