England head coach Jon Lewis hopes the decision to drop Alice Capsey from the T20 and Test squads for the tour of South Africa will prove a “line in the sand” for her international career and allow her to come back stronger.
Just weeks after England’s disappointing group-stage exit from the Women’s T20 World Cup in Dubai, all-rounder Capsey proved the high-profile exclusion from two of the three squads for England’s triple-format South African tour, which starts from November 24.
Capsey, who was only included in the ODI squad, has not scored more than 25 in any of her last five T20 internationals and was run out for a single in England’s dismal six-wicket loss to West Indies on October 15 that knocked them out of the World Cup.
Explaining the decision for the first time to omit Capsey from two of the three squads, Lewis said the 20-year-old had been “trending in the wrong direction” with her game and said he is looking to see more consistency from her – something he backed the Surrey youngster to ultimately achieve.
“We have talked at length with Alice,” said Lewis.
“We have given her some really clear guidance on where we’d like her to improve and how we’d like her to play and, I suppose, the most important thing from my point of view in that position at number three is that she continues to try and impact the game and play the way that we’d like her to play, but we’d also like her to be a little bit more consistent in that space.
“So probably just in terms of Alice in particular just a good time for her to have a little think, a little reset and come back stronger.
“What I do know about Alice is that she’s incredibly strong-willed and really determined to be the best player she can be. I’m really convinced that over a period of time this will be a line in the sand for her to look back and say ‘Actually, I just need to adapt my game and play slightly more consistently when I pull on an England shirt’.
“There is no doubt in my mind that over time she will play lots and lots of games for England in all formats of the game, but at the moment she is just trending in the wrong direction and we need to have a little reset, to be honest.”
Lewis responds to T20 World Cup exit criticisms
Having reached at least the semi-finals at the previous six Women’s T20 World Cups, England’s early exit this time led to media scrutiny on various aspects of the team’s play, preparations and future.
Former England spinner Alex Hartley criticised the fitness of some of the squad, while there were also questions raised about Lewis’ own position in his role moving.
While Lewis said he had “hadn’t heard” any comment about his role, he strongly took issue with Hartley’s criticism of fitness levels.
“I 100 per cent don’t agree with that as a statement,” he said. “We are trending really in the right direction around our physical fitness.
“We have made a lot of progress across the board in different parts of fitness – power, speed, endurance.
“Availability is another part of it and our players are available more often than not. We have got about 95 per cent availability over the past six months of all our contracted players, and on top of that they are improving physically across the board. I’m more than happy to talk to Alex about that, I’ve said that before.”
And on his own role moving forward, Lewis said: “I feel like this is a developing team and we are a team that is really pushing forward in terms of our performances over the last year.
“We are obviously incredibly disappointed about that particular performance at the World Cup and I suppose the thing that was most disappointing about that was the fact that our bowling group didn’t execute their skills as well as they could have done in probably the first eight or nine overs of that game and we obviously dropped five catches and that’s another execution thing that we’ll look at.
“But over the course of that tournament, we played some good cricket, and you have to expect with a young group of bowlers, who apart from Nat Sciver-Brunt are all 25 and under, inconsistency. They are a developing group of bowlers and unfortunately that moment we didn’t deliver what we needed to deliver. That’s T20 cricket. T20 cricket can be really brutal at times and that was a good example of it.”
‘There is some work to do around developing the next group of leaders’
Lewis, who confirmed that Sciver-Brunt will remain in the vice-captaincy role to skipper Heather Knight on the tour, also took issue with suggestions his side lacked a ‘Plan B’ after the latter went off injured in their tournament-ending defeat to the West Indies.
“There was definitely a Plan B but, like I said, we didn’t execute our skills as well as we would have liked to have done in that situation,” he said.
“Nat Sciver-Brunt is a very different leader to Heather Knight, I would say that. Heather’s obviously a really good leader of this group and to lose our captain through injury at that point of the game – she was batting particularly well at the time and it could have cost us 15-20 runs in the game and that would have made a big difference – that assuredness of leadership in that crunch game in particular is a real big blow.
“However, I have full faith in Nat and her ability to lead an England cricket team. She has done it before and whilst she can develop her leadership skills, and we are working with her on that in the last two years, at that point in time we didn’t get all our decisions right, but she got the majority of them right and that’s probably what you would expect of a captain. No captain gets everything right and there’s lots of different ways to captain a cricket team, and I’m really confident that given that opportunity again Nat would do a really good job.”
Lewis did, however, acknowledge that there was work to do on developing the leadership skills among the side’s young generation of players.
“I’m not concerned in whether or not Nat Sciver-Brunt can come in and replace Heather Knight, I think she is a more than capable leader,” he added.
“Behind that there is, for me, a gap in terms of the age range of player and experience of player. Behind that, there are a couple of players who are 26… Sophie Ecclestone is about 25 and then behind that we have got players who are 24, 23 and a lot younger.
“So there is some work to do around developing the next group of leaders within this team. Within our senior playing group, most of those players are at 32, 33-plus, but there’s quite a gap I suppose from the ages of 30 down to 25, 26.”
Lewis added: “It’s something we have talked about for a period of time now and something we will be working hard to make sure that there is an over-supply of leaders when we get to that point. But I don’t think that point is too soon.”
England in South Africa fixtures – live on Sky Sports Cricket
T20 series
- Sunday November 24: South Africa vs England – Buffalo Park Cricket Stadium, East London
- Wednesday November 27: South Africa vs England – Willowmoore Park, Benoni
- Saturday November 30: South Africa vs England – SuperSport Park, Centurion
ODI series
- Wednesday December 4: South Africa vs England – Kimberley Oval, Kimberley
- Sunday December 8: South Africa vs England – Hollywoodbets Kingsmead Stadium, Durban
- Wednesday December 11: South Africa vs England – JB Marks Oval, Potchefstroom
Test match
- December 15-18: South Africa v England – Mangaung Oval, Bloemfontein
Watch England’s three-format tour of South Africa live on Sky Sports Cricket from November 24 until the run up to Christmas. Get Sky Sports to watch cricket and lots more live.
