Jon Lewis: I think we’re just scratching the surface of what this team is capable of

This summer, England achieved what had previously seemed impossible. Up until the 2023 Ashes, Australia, double world champions and Commonwealth Games gold medallists, had lost three games of cricket in the past three years. England beat them four times in a couple of weeks, winning both white-ball series to leave the overall scoreline squared. And they did it all in front of packed houses in marquee stadiums, playing a brand of cricket that reenergised the side, sparking belief that they can go toe to toe with the most dominant team women’s cricket has ever known.

It’s a stark contrast from where they were a year ago. In a disappointing 2022 summer, they failed to medal in a home Commonwealth Games and were whitewashed in an ODI series by India. Central to their change in fortunes is their head coach, Jon Lewis.

“I think we’re just scratching the surface of what the team is capable of,” Lewis tells Wisden.com. “My primary reflection is that I’m really excited about what we’ve achieved in such a short space of time.”

Lewis has been in charge of England since last November. It’s cliche to say the side has played with more freedom and positivity, but that is what they’ve done. That was epitomised by their aggressive approach in the T20 World Cup in South Africa, and their tenacity in pulling the Ashes back from the brink. The terms Lewis uses – fearlessness and intent – have been repeated so many times by coaches and players alike that their impact has been reduced, but he has managed to instil feeling into that ambiguity, and the effect is clear to see.

“You’ve got to walk the talk,” says Lewis. “You can talk as much as you like in cricket teams, in dressing rooms, team meetings or one to one with players. But you have to back that up with your actions as a coach.”

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Much of what England were able to achieve this summer was built off their winter’s work. After bowing out in the semi-finals in South Africa, Lewis and several members of England’s playing group travelled to India for the WPL. Having received his first job in the women’s game four months ago, six weeks as head coach of UP Warriorz was a valuable experience if, by Lewis’ own admission, unexpected.

“That was a real surprise to go and do that,” he says. “It was actually really useful in terms of research into the women’s game to speed up my understanding of all the players around the world and how they play.

“A lot of the insight I got from the WPL really helped to help me through the Ashes, in terms of understanding the Australian players. Three of their senior players were playing in my franchise and that was really useful to get an understanding of how they play and think. It really shaped how we played against them.”

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Despite the benefits increased globalisation of the women’s game brings, when the Ashes Test match rolled around after a winter on a T20 diet and with the Charlotte Edwards Cup already concluded, the nature of the challenge and its difference from Lewis’ own experiences as a player and coach became more stark.

“I was thinking, before the Test match that I played in my first season as a county cricketer, I’d played about 16 four-day games,” says Lewis. “Heather Knight has only played 11 Test matches in the whole time that she’s been playing cricket. That’s the difference in terms of volume of play at a young age. So they have to develop very much in front of the cameras, which is part of the challenge. Building confidence and reducing anxiety around execution of skill I think is really important in the women’s game.”

Nevertheless, the Ashes Test match this summer was a hugely significant moment, both for England’s series narrative and the wider picture of the game as a whole. Played over five days which helped foster a result, the first in a women’s Test since 2015, with thousands of punters flooding into Trent Bridge throughout the game, it set the scene for a landmark series.

The players too delivered. However, despite the individual brilliance of Tammy Beaumont’s double century and Sophie Ecclestone’s marathon ten-for, England’s loss meant they were 0-4 down. Even to the most optimistic, regaining the Ashes had almost slipped away, further compounded by the loss of the first T20I at Edgbaston.

However, the new energy Lewis has cultivated around the group played a key role in shutting out the outside noise: “I said after the Test match that the belief in our group grew rather than shrunk.

“I imagine people on the outside would have thought, six-nil down after the T20 loss, against Australia – England have got no chance to come back; but actually, I just got more and more confident that we could win games against them. We only had to win a couple of moments in each of those first two games, and we would have won those games as well, and the same with the game at Southampton.

“The determination of the senior player group was very much there. They were very keen, especially once it felt like we were right in the series so to speak. After the win at The Oval, the senior playing group were like, ‘right, come on: this is our time, we know we can beat this team’.”

That T20I at the Kia Oval set the scene for England to win the series at Lord’s. It was the first time Australia had been beaten in a bilateral T20I series since 2017, and the first time England women had secured a T20I series win over them in a decade.

“The bit that I didn’t realise about before the Ashes was the series within the series,” says Lewis. “I didn’t really understand the history of how long the Australians hadn’t lost a series before people started telling me it was ten years.

“We definitely just took one game at a time and I know it’s an old cliche, but I tried to make sure that the girls weren’t looking too far ahead and they were just doing the skills that were required on the day and in the moment.

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“After Bristol, I said something in the dressing room, and they all jumped down my throat because they thought I’d got a little bit ahead of myself and then they all said, hey we’ve got to do one game at a time coach. So they kept me honest as well which is great.”

England were unable to regain the Ashes after a narrow loss at Southampton, but the trophy’s location shouldn’t take away from what they were able to achieve this summer. It was summarised for Lewis by the winner’s celebrations, or lack thereof, after the final ODI of the series in Taunton.

“The Aussies were really down actually, like really down,” he says. “That was interesting to see that they’d taken the Ashes home but that’s not what they came to do. What I would say is that we’ve now shown them what we can do and they will go away and work hard and come back stronger. So we’ve got to work harder and come back stronger ourselves and develop our players and try to make sure that we’re continually trying to develop the players as much as we can. We’re a developing team, we’re nowhere near the finished article.”

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If the Ashes represents the best England are capable of at the moment, the ongoing series against Sri Lanka is being treated as a breeding ground for future success. Nat Sciver-Brunt, Sophia Dunkley, Sophie Ecclestone and Danni Wyatt will all miss at least part of the series, while 17-year-old Mahika Gaur made her England debut in the first T20I at Hove.

There’s another T20 World Cup next year, and there are only two T20I series in England’s schedule after Sri Lanka before they head to Bangladesh for the global event. But, when asked how close he is to being able to name his starting XI for the first game in the tournament, lack of playing time between now and then doesn’t seem to be a concern.

“Pretty close,” he says flippantly. “If I was to sit here and name what I think my best XI is now there might be one or two spots that you think, okay we could maybe shift those around a little bit depending on if everyone’s fit and healthy.

“It feels like a really good time to have a look at some of the young players and make sure that they understand what it is to be an international cricketer and to give them an opportunity to go, right, okay, this is what I can do as well.”

The most notable omission from England’s Sri Lanka T20 squad was Beaumont. Following her Ashes double hundred, she showed how far her game has developed since she was dropped from the T20I side last year in the ODI series against Australia. She followed up by finishing the women’s Hundred by as its second-highest run scorer, and became the first player ever to score a century in the competition.

But for Lewis, it’s not a question of how well Beaumont’s performing, but the shape of the side he’s building: “She’s performing fantastically well. I really hope that she gets picked up in the Big Bash and she goes out there and takes it to them as well. But like I said, the bit that I’m really happy with is the way that Sophia and Danni take on the powerplay. I think they’re the best opening partnership in the world in terms of how dynamic they are.

“To pick someone you’ve got to drop someone and I’m really happy with how those two girls are playing. Tammy’s just got to keep going and hope for an opportunity over the course of the next year.”

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The depth of options Lewis has at his disposal, and the level at which incoming players can perform, is something no incoming England women’s coach has ever had.

It’s a new challenge for Lewis, who came to the England Women job after a stint as England Men’s fast-bowling coach. While he insists he coaches individuals, not gender, the rapid pace at which the game is growing has seen him tasked with younger, rawer talents than in his previous role, requiring an altered approach.

“I’ve definitely coached differently in the women’s game than the men’s game,” he says. “But it’s not necessarily the technique or the belief system behind it. Primarily, a lot of it is around confidence and getting the players to believe in their ability.

“Because of the lack of game time and the less time they’ve spent doing the task, there’s anxiety around performance because they haven’t got a big bank of evidence that backs it up. Whereas in the men’s game, by the time we get to 24-25, you’ve got three, four, or five seasons of county cricket in the bank. That’s a lot of games.

“When I was a young fast bowler I made so many mistakes. But I was doing that at county level or county 2nd XI level or in a club game. These girls get put into England teams because they’re talented and they have high potential.”

England are awash with young potential superstars. Lauren Filer, Issy Wong, Alice Capsey and Lauren Bell, to name a few, are either not long out of their teens or yet to turn 20. That fast tracking of talent has its benefits, but it also means their development happens under the spotlight.

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“It’s really hard to be a professional cricketer,” says Lewis. “Being under scrutiny the whole time, every game you play is on TV and everyone’s talking about you. The scrutiny is going up on an almost monthly basis in women’s sport now. Having an understanding of that, and giving the players a firm belief that you’re backing them all the way and not contradicting yourself in the dressing room means they start to feel like you’re not making it all up.

“If we are able to give them the right dose of playing time, the right dose of training time and the right dose of development time in terms of skill development, then we can really balance out their programme and develop a really strong group of young players because what we’ve got in terms of raw talent and raw ability is phenomenal. Other countries will be so jealous of what our talent pool is.”

While the years before Lewis might have marked a stagnation of that progress, a broad acceptance that the best England could hope for was second-best to Australia’s dominance, the next few years are an opportunity to leap forward.

“We have lots of options and a really deep amount of talent that’s developing all the time for the next World Cup and the next Ashes series and the following World Cup after that,” he says. “That’s three in three years so we’ve got a lot of high-level cricket to play. I want all our best players to be ready and also our best young players to be pushing those players to keep improving.

“There’s a long way to go with the team. Which is really exciting.”