An Ashes walloping such as the one England’s women have just endured in Australia inevitably triggers a review but for Mark Robinson, head coach when Heather Knight’s team won the World Cup in 2017, the latest must go beyond sacking individuals.
“It has been a tough watch,” Robinson says. “But it is never down to one thing or person and I really hope the review goes much deeper.”
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These days Robinson works as head coach of the Warwickshire men’s team but he remains invested enough from afar to share his thoughts on the 16-0 defeat.
“The blame game pushes people into a corner. Instead, it has to go back four years and ask how English cricket can get better as a whole. How do we expose players to more pressurised situations? How do we deepen the talent pool? How do we attract the best athletes and take girls from football and hockey?
“Sacking the coach and captain is not the answer, it would be too simplistic. Whether they keep their roles is a different matter. I think I’m right in saying this is Jon Lewis’s first head coach role. We sometimes cheat people out of the chance to do things differently, to grow.
“But everyone in the women’s game, top to bottom, and now with professionalism [underneath the national team], should be asking themselves what they can do to make English women’s cricket better.”
Respect for a fellow head coach is understandable, likewise loyalty to a former captain in Knight. But Robinson insists that, for all the external concerns about a lack of leadership alternatives, there will always be a successor should Knight decide – or have it decided for her – that nine years in the role is plenty.
Robinson himself had to make an educated bet in 2016 when, controversially at the time, he ushered the great Charlotte Edwards into retirement and invested in Knight.
“Lottie’s incredible desire was there but her knees were letting her down,” Robinson says. “I didn’t know how Heather would go but she was as good a leader as I have worked with. We had a vision and she delivered by example, looking to be the best version of herself at all times.
“There is always somebody, and if England have done their job they should know who it is. I would hope and expect they do.”
As well as forcing the players to stop looking to Edwards for answers, that particular reset – a bold one, with a home World Cup just a year away – was based on a theme that has reared its head over the past six months: fitness. Robinson caused a stir when, barely an hour after the semi‑final defeat against Australia in the T20 World Cup that prompted the change, he called out this particular shortcoming publicly.
“It made a few headlines,” he says. “But the key thing as a coach is that you link fitness to performance, not order it for the sake of fitness. When I made that point, our issue was losing a knockout game by five runs after missing out on singles or not running a second. And more broadly, it is something tangible you can control.
“Look at Beth Mooney [409 runs for Australia across the multiformat clean sweep]. She is not among the most stylish but she is a 360 player and a coach’s dream because she can run a side ragged. For every England batter, that is the standard. Have you got the fitness, the desire, match awareness to do that?”
This in turn brings us back to the current environment fostered by Lewis and a suspicion – certainly going by the Guardian’s Raf Nicholson on the ground – that, following the lead of England’s men, there has been an attempt to be more relaxed and focus on enjoyment rather than outcome. The question is whether so‑called Bazball can work at this stage of the team’s development.
“It is a pendulum,” Robinson says. “You can go too far into hard‑nosed professionalism and it can be too intense and have a knock‑on effect for mental health. But you can go too far the other way, give too much freedom and fun, and there is no consequence. You are always trying to tweak it for that perfect balance.
“Enjoyment has to be there but you’re also wanting to teach them to go big, to be relentless and greedy. They have just played against some great role models in that respect. We could do with some of that old‑fashioned language coming back.”
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It is here that Robinson expects greater coordination through the game given the acceleration of professionalism at the domestic level, something that during his four-year tenure was confined to just nationally contracted players and the semi-professional Kia Super League that ran from 2016 to the start of the Hundred in 2021.
With the eight first-class counties now also running “tier one” women’s setups (and a number who missed out vowing to join the club) there should be a broadened talent pool, pressure in selection from underneath, as well as a home for those dropped by England to recalibrate their game under full-time coaches. England are playing catch‑up with Australia here but Robinson believes the gap will be bridged in time.
“We have to make the domestic game the solution, not the problem – which is how it can feel in the men’s game at times. How do we, as one game, knock Australia off their perch? And we will. Nothing lasts forever. In football you had the Liverpool dynasty, the Manchester United dynasty, look at Manchester City now. At some point England or India will start pushing them and they will look fallible.”
