They fell just short of making the perfect start in their new, Commonwealth Games medal-chasing collaboration, but for Imogen Bankier and Kirsty Gilmour, the Yonex Welsh International Open provided them with a satisfactory start to their sporting adventure.

Since their target is to pick up maximum ranking points from the limited number of events they have time to enter together ahead of Glasgow 2014 in bidding to gain a top-four seeding, which could make a crucial difference to their chances, the idea was to win the title.

That would also have given them the maximum amount of court time together with five matches in all and they looked well on course when they knocked out the fourth seeds in their opening round and the eighth seeds in the quarter-final.

However, in the semi-final, their fourth match in all, they came a cropper to Australian qualifiers He Tian Tang and Renuga Veeran. Since Bankier and Petya Nedelcheva, her other women's doubles partner with whom she is pursuing European Championship honours earlier this year, had beaten the same pair in the quarter-finals at the Scottish Open Grand Prix the previous week, it was in many ways the ideal measure of where they are at this stage.

"We have mixed emotions," said Bankier, winner of five mixed doubles titles with Robert Blair this season.

"Of course we are both disappointed to lose, but we didn't play our best and it's good to know where we are so we can work on some weaknesses when we get home."

The 2011 world championship silver medallist, in partnership with England's Chris Adcock, is much the more experienced of the pair, but she admits that - having formed her partnership with Bulgarian Nedelcheva this year - she too has much to learn having previously been a mixed doubles specialist.

"I'm becoming more familiar with it now, but I didn't play any ladies doubles after Delhi [the 2010 Commonwealth games] until I started playing with Petya at the beginning of this year, so it's relatively new, but although my strongest event is mixed and Kirsty's is singles we are still serious about our doubles," she said.

"At the moment we don't really know our level so we don't want to pile loads of pressure on ourselves. It's a bit of testing the water and seeing how it goes before we come up with any real clear goals.

"There's definitely an element of whether there's a natural gel or a natural chemistry when you're on court with somebody, but a lot of it is just number of matches. You need to play a lot with someone and train a lot with them, putting in the hours to get the understanding.

"Chemistry's important but it only takes you so far. That's the aim with these tournaments. We should hopefully be seeing a lot of games and it's that match practice that should put us in good stead for next year when we will hopefully play some slightly bigger events against tougher opposition, but you can tell pretty quickly if a partnership has the potential to be good or not."

The signs are good then, with the 20-year-old, albeit jokingly, making it clear that she will not be shy about asserting herself.

"I don't let her get away with creeping up at that net. I want a shot at that," said Gilmour with a cheeky grin, before adding more seriously: "We're both pretty good movers and my strength's at the back of the court while Imogen's is at the net from our respective disciplines, but I think we've worked quite well so far to get ourselves into the right positions."

Having focused on the women's doubles in Wales both will also compete in their recognised specialist disciplines this week before playing solely in the women's doubles again in Italy later this month.