England coach Jon Lewis believes their women’s team, outplayed in the Ashes, just can’t match Australia for athleticism, speed or power as he points to a stark “cultural difference” between the nations.
Concerns over the England team’s general fitness and conditioning were first raised by World Cup winner-turned-commentator Alex Hartley, who subsequently claimed she had been “hung out to dry” and refused interviews as a result of her comments.
But, after losing all five women’s Ashes matches so far to run up a painful and unassailable 10-0 deficit in the multi-format series, Lewis accepted there was a mismatch when it came to physical prowess between the rival teams.
Yet he also suggested that was not the sole reason for the unexpected scale of their defeat.
“I would say they’re a much more athletic team than us, they’re more agile, they look faster, at times they look more powerful,” said Lewis ahead of Saturday’s third T20 in Adelaide.
“Is that the reason that we’re not winning cricket matches here in this country? No.
“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.
“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.”
Assessing the reason for the fitness standards of the Australian team, he took a wider view.
“I walked from Bondi to Coogee the other Sunday morning and pretty much the whole of the eastern suburbs of Sydney were out swimming in the sea and running and walking,” he said.
“There’s a cultural difference there as well in terms of Australia versus England, as well as there is England versus India or India versus South Africa. So comparing the two nations I think is slightly different.”
A continuation of Australia’s dominance in the concluding Test in Melbourne would surely invite questions over the leadership of the team, with Lewis and long-standing captain Heather Knight likely to be under scrutiny.
“I love this job and I am committed to making them a better team,” Lewis said.
“I expected this to be a really, really hard tour for us to come and compete and win. Australia are an exceptional team, playing on a home soil, they have been world-beating for a long period of time and we’ve got a developing group of cricketers.”
Meanwhile, the home side are in ruthless mood.
The prospect of a 16-0 clean sweep, 18 months on from an 8-8 draw on English soil, remains on the cards and Grace Harris is eager to make it hurt.
“I won’t be happy if we drop that third T20, put it that way,” Harris told Triple M.
“We want to embarrass the Poms here, not just beat them, we want to thrash them.”
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