Posted by We’re not sure this is the effective rebuttal he thinks it is. England have been criticised for their fitness both before and during this Ashes capitulation, but head coach Jon Lewis says they didn’t lose because of that – there are in fact loads of other reasons why they’ve lost every game, as well as the fitness thing.
To quickly bring you up to speed, in October England were knocked out of the T20 World Cup in the group stages. Their final match, against the West Indies, featured a lamentable fielding display in which opener Qiana Joseph was dropped five times. (On two of those occasions, she was effectively dropped for six.)
After that match, former England player, now BBC pundit, Alex Hartley, said that England needed to get fitter. “Australia have got 15 or 16 athletes; genuine athletes. You look at our team – I’m not going to name names, but if you look at them, you know.”
Hartley’s view was that 80% of the England team were fit and athletic enough and the remainder were letting the side down.
Lewis disagreed. He said the criticism was unfair and that in his view: “Fitness was absolutely nothing to do with us losing that game.”
Either way, Hartley’s assessment has hung in the air for this Ashes and as the series has progressed, it has become more and more of a ‘thing’. Australia have fielded like demons and so far won every game.
Hartley has since said she’s been given the cold shoulder by some players, highlighting as one example Sophie Ecclestone allegedly refusing to do an interview with her. Against all odds, revealing this development in a podcast has not defused the situation.
England are digging in. Lewis is in fact so keen to disabuse people of the idea that fitness is a problem that he’s gone out of his way to list all the other ways in which Australia are superior.
“I would say yeah they are, they’re a much more athletic team than us,” he told the BBC. “They’re more agile, they look faster, at times they look more powerful.
“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.”
Lewis thinks his team have been more competitive than the scoreline suggests (they haven’t, not really), but concedes: “We definitely need to get faster and we can access more power for sure.”
That sounds a little like he’s come round to the idea that the T20 World Cup criticism had some merit, after all. Might that bring a ceasefire from those still taking potshots at the messenger?
Extras
A quick question about the email, if subscribers could please spare us a moment…
A few months back we changed the daily email to display only excerpts, not full articles. The reason we did that is because several bits of formatting that we use from time to time do not transfer across. (These days you have to design everything to work in four different formats: desktop, mobile, tablet and email.)
The benefits of this are that you’ll see the articles laid-out as they were intended. They should look better and there’s less scope for confusion resulting from some element not displaying. You’re also nearer the comments, which we still consider a really important part of the website.
The downside is that it’s annoying having to click through the website, isn’t it? Particularly when you then have to close the pop-up urging to subscribe to the email you’ve just clicked through from.
So what are your thoughts? Should we stick with the excerpts or go back to full articles and either make the articles more straightforwardly formatted or accept that they won’t always show right?
If you prefer the latter, you have to promise to make the effort to click through to the comments more often, okay?
Don’t know what we’re on about? Sign up for the damn email.
If England have been more competitive than the scoreline suggests, that’s only because 12-0 might – just might – have been 10-2 or 11-1 if the stars and weather gods aligned. Which still isn’t very competitive but is indeed more competitive than 12-0 suggests, because you might think the only place you can go from there is up. But that 3rd T20 was the sort of proper thrashing that makes 12-0 look about right, and is a reminder there is another place you can go after all – zero but looking even worse for it. I don’t think you can look at any of those 12 points and say “the Aussies didn’t deserve to earn that one.” They earned all of them. More to the point, England weren’t just awarded zero by decree. They well and truly earned their zero. Just don’t, whatever you do, call it a big fat zero…
Ritu Singh, born in the cricketing hot-spot of St Louis, Missouri, took 5/15 to help the USA bundle NZ out for 97 at the U19 World Cup. She previously took 2/8 in their WC win over Ireland and already has 16 wickets in full internationals, her 11 T20I wickets coming at an average of 18.36 and economy of 5.69.
The USA had batted reasonably competitively in their loss to England, making 119/5 batting first. Singh scored 14 off 15 batting at number 6 but was run out just when the match was nicely poised, with the USA at 66/4 off 12 overs chasing down a target of 98, with the required run rate at exactly 4.00. Unfortunately 66/5 off 12.1 overs rapidly became 79 all out off 17.1 as NZ’s bowlers spared their batters some blushes to seal an 18 run victory. Singh was player of the match but the US must think they should have had taken another full member there.
Yes, struck by this myself. “It’s not that they’re fit, it’s that we’re sh*t” is an unusual line for the coach to take. Seems to jar a bit with him then saying actually it’s not that bad.
The only way is up?
This is a touchy subject, obviously, for lots of people. And I’m in a cricket WhatsApp group that has mocked some female cricketers in the past for, let’s face it, being fat and not fit. I defended the point that women’s bodies are very different from men’s and have different shapes and hold weight in different places, particularly around the hips, bum and thighs – and a second point that there’s been a few excellent male cricketers (mostly in the past) that have been on the round side but been appreciated for their skills just the same. I’ve not watched any of this series, so I’m not sure what my point is. I think Jon Lewis is not a very good coach though.
(Email excerpt works damn well.)
That’s a good point about fitness in the men’s game. I guess we won’t hear, say, Mike Gatting or Inzaman criticising the women’s fitness…
We suppose they’re being rated against other female cricketers (Australia’s) rather than some imagined ideal in this instance. Although you’re right that Hartley did seem to allude to appearance, which, as you say, is not always the most accurate measure.
She might argue that what she suggested we “look at” is their performance in the field, but that would be unusual wording. At the same time, even if she were referring to physical appearance, there’s a case for saying that she’s drawn her conclusions based on performance with appearance serving as what you might call supporting evidence.
Could we point out that even if they do hold weight in different places and whatnot, when you compare someone, appearance does kinda give you a pretty good idea of how fit someone is. I have a mate who is pretty much the same build as me in everyway, the only difference is he holds more weight. Based on appearance, you may think he is slower and that is true. He can’t run for shite
appearance, ie. whether the cricketer looks good doesn’t matter, but if their appearance is filling a 2xl shirt, then i think you can safely say they are lot less fitter than if they lost 3 stone and filled out a large shirt.
excerpts are fine.