Australia's Alexandra Croak and Melissa Wu collected a silver medal in the final of the women’s 10 metre platform synchronised event at the World Diving Championships in Shanghai.

Having finished second in the preliminary event behind the Chinese pair Wang and Chen, the Aussie girls finished their final dive strongly to edge out Germany’s Steuer and Subchinski to claim the silver medal.

China’s Wang and Chen won gold with 362.58, followed by Croak and Wu, scoring 325.92. In third place was Germany (Steuer and Subschinski) scoring 316.29. Great Britain was fourth (314.52).

‘We are very relieved to have got this result. It was such a strong field and we knew we had to complete our last dive well to collect the silver,’ Croak said.

‘This keeps us on target for London so this is a good stepping stone.’

When asked about the pressure leading in to the last dive Alexandra said ‘our last dive is our best dive so we were up for it.’

The Australians were fifth after round one and dropped to seventh at the end of round two.

‘In round three we knew we had to get our difficult dives right and we did it,’ Wu said.

‘That brought us up in the field to third after round three, and then we went to second with one round to go.’

‘It is so good to get a result like this as we have worked very hard together, particularly after my interrupted preparation with injury.’