England need to get fitter following their shambolic exit from the Women’s T20 World Cup, according to former spinner Alex Hartley.
England dropped five catches in a defeat by West Indies on Tuesday that condemned them to a first group-stage exit since 2010.
And Hartley, a 50-over World Cup winner in 2017, told Test Match Special: “I’m not going to name names, but if you look at them, you know. You know who’s blowing a gasket and who isn’t.
“About 80% of the England team are fit and athletic enough, but there are girls in that side who are letting the team down when it comes to fitness.”
England won their opening three group-stage matches, but were still vulnerable when they met the Windies in their final game.
England posted 141-7 and, in doing so, lost captain Heather Knight to a calf injury.
With Knight unable to field, England fell apart. West Indies reached their target in 18 overs and went through to the semi-finals alongside South Africa, leaving England third in the group on net run-rate.
“It’s really disappointing, isn’t it? West Indies played a totally different game to England,” said Hartley, who won 32 caps for England between 2016 and 2019.
“There are going to be a lot of questions asked and some of them, rightly so, on fitness. England need to get fitter.”
Hartley used the example of Australia, the premier team in the world, continuing to overlook leg-spinner Amanda-Jade Wellington, who has not played international cricket since 2022.
“Australia have got 15 or 16 athletes, genuine athletes,” said Hartley. “They have the best leg-spinner in the world in Amanda-Jade Wellington, that doesn’t even get in their squads any more because she’s not fit enough.”
Asked about the fitness of the national team, England and Wales Cricket Board chief executive Richard Gould said: “Athleticism in cricket is increasingly important. We need to go back 10 or 20 years in the men’s game to see the difference that provides.
“We want to provide whatever support we can to all our players. We’ve under-invested in the women’s game for a long time. Only going back to 2019, we had 18 professional players. Next year, we’ll have closer to 200 professional women’s players.
“That’s a lot of progress in a short amount of time and there will be things that we want to continue to improve on.”
Knight took charge in 2016 and led England to their last major trophy in 2017. Hartley pointed to the chaos in the field in Knight’s absence as a reason for the 33-year-old to stay on. She also supported head coach Jon Lewis.
“When you have not won a World Cup for so long, things need to change,” said Hartley. “Last night showed how much England need Heather Knight on the field, because she’s a calm character. She wasn’t there and everyone was looking around all flustered.
“I don’t know where change comes from. I think Jon Lewis is the right man for the job. He has changed women’s cricket, getting the girls to realise they can have a better work-life balance.
“Whether or not they have potentially gone too far the other way, I’m not sure.”
