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England cricket coach Jon Lewis has admitted that Australia cricket’s players are superior athletes to his side, though insisted that it is not the reason for their Women’s Ashes dominance.
The hosts have won every match in the multi-format series so far, establishing an unassailable 10-0 lead with one T20I and the four-day Test match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground to come.
Past criticism of England’s fitness has been brought back into the spotlight both by a number of poor fielding performances and the treatment of former England spinner and pundit Alex Hartley, who claimed that she had been given the “cold shoulder” by members of the squad after previous comments.
Hartley was heavily critical of the fitness standards of some individuals after England’s T20 World Cup exit to the West Indies last year, and claimed that Sophie Ecclestone had refused a television interview with her after the first T20I in Sydney.
Lewis had issued a strong rebuttal to Hartley’s comments in the wake of the World Cup exit, but admitted that the Australian squad had shown athletic advantages in the series.
The under-pressure England head coach does not, however, believe that it is the primary factor for their series defeat.
“I would say yeah they are, they’re a much more athletic team than us, they’re more agile, they look faster, at times they look more powerful,” outlined Lewis.
“Is that the reason that we’re not winning cricket matches here in this country? No. I think their discipline and their skill level has been higher. It’s an area of the game that we work on continually – all of our players do – and work really hard on it.
“We definitely need to get faster and we can access more power for sure. If you’re talking about whether or not we can run marathons, we don’t need to. We need to be fit for purpose.”
England appeared to have made great strides under Lewis during the last Women’s Ashes in 2023, fighting back to secure a drawn series while embracing a more attacking style of cricket.
But recurring failures in pressure games at major tournaments have extended their spell without silverware to eight years, while their inability to consistently challenge Australia has placed pressure on Lewis and captain Heather Knight.
The final T20 of the series will be held in Adelaide on Saturday before preparations begin for the day-night Test in Melbourne.
And Lewis believes that a better performance is coming from his tourists.
“You haven’t seen the best version of this team on this tour, but there is so much potential,” said Lewis. “If you look at the drawn Ashes in 2023, I think we poked the bear a little bit.
“They’ve gone away and reset. The scoreline is bigger but I don’t think the gap is bigger. We won those critical moments in games last time, and they have turned them on their side in this series. We are clearly disappointed we haven’t got the results but I think we’ve been more competitive than the scoreline suggests.”
