England's women showed their male counterparts how it should be done with silver in the 4x100 metres relay.

A day after the star-studded men's quartet failed to advance from the heats due to a botched changeover, the less-fancied women sprinted to second place behind Jamaica.

Nwanyika Onuora, Kimberly Wall, Laura Turner and Emma Ania clocked a time of 43.43 seconds with Australia taking the bronze.

Wall, a 400m specialist who ran the second leg, said: "I was a bit scared because I'm the slowest of the group. But we've been practising lots on our changeovers and it was worth it. The girls have proved we can do it.

"We were watching the men last night and were disappointed for them so we came here to give it a go."

Onuora added: "It's absolutely amazing. We all ran well in our individual races but we all came together as a team and came away with a silver medal.

"It's been an amazing experience to come out to Melbourne, it's been such a big learning curve for us and it's great to be on the podium.

"Since the team was announced in September we've been out there training, practising changes. We knew we could get on the podium, we worked so hard, there was no reason why we couldn't.

"We saw the men's race on TV and we were distraught for all of them. It's unfortunate for them but for us, we needed the medal. We had so much team spirit."