2001. England's batting remained unreliable, and Australia won all five matches between the sides: two Test matches and three ODIs. Taylor was praised as the only highlight of the English batting; her innings of 50 not out was the highest score by her side in any of the ODIs. In the second Test, she significantly improved on her previous best Test score of 18 runs, batting for over four hours in a gritty performance to reach 137 runs. Taylor missed the tour of India in January 2002 after injuring her knee in a training session, but returned the following summer with a string of good performances in the Super Fours—a competition in which the England selectors place the 48 leading players into four teams—trailing only her England teammate Charlotte Edwards as the leading run-scorer. In the four ODIs that season, against New Zealand and India, Taylor failed to make an impact, scoring just 43 runs in total. Ahead of a tour by the England women to New Zealand and Australia, Taylor competed in the State League, a one-day competition in New Zealand, for the Canterbury Magicians. She finished the tournament in the top-five batsmen, scoring 252 runs at an average of 42.00. Unfortunately for England, her good form did not continue into the international matches: in her seven ODI matches, she scored 87 runs. She continued to struggle at the start of the 2003 English domestic season, prompting Wisden to report that she "had barely scraped a run" in the County Championship matches. Despite her struggles, she survived an overhaul of the England squad, in which seven of the players who had toured Australia and New Zealand had been dropped. She repaid the faith shown in her, striking centuries in both Test matches against South Africa. The first, a score of 177 runs, was the highest total she made in Test cricket, and was scored over six and a half hours, and was just twelve runs short of the highest by any England woman. Two weeks later, she became one of only five women, as of 2012, to have scored centuries in consecutive Test matches, when she scored 131 runs at Taunton. Her performances in the ODI series were less eye-catching, but a half-century in the first match helped her finish second to Laura Newton as England's leading run-scorer. Taylor competed in the State League for the second consecutive year