Jon Lewis calls for more red-ball preparation as Women's Ashes Test looms

Jon Lewis, the England Women's head coach, has called for more opportunities to play red-ball cricket at domestic level as his England squad prepare for next week's Ashes Test.

England named a 15-strong squad on Monday for the five-day match at Trent Bridge and another group of 13 players to represent England A against Australia in a three-day warm-up match in Leicester. The England A team fixture and another three-day match running concurrently from this Thursday, between the Test squad and Australia A in Derby, represent the selectors' best opportunity to gauge their players' ability to handle the longest format, with Lewis admitting that gathering women's red-ball data posed a challenge.

"All coaches will probably tell you they'd like more time with their players and they would like more time on task," Lewis said. "So long-term, I think some form of multi-day cricket for our preparation to win Ashes series and win Test matches would be really useful.

"I'm really pleased with where the players are at with the preparation time that we've had. I think they're in a really good head space. They're very clear about how we want to play and they're ready for the challenge ahead."

It wasn't surprising then, that the Ashes squad comprised the XI which played South Africa in the drawn four-day Test at Taunton a year ago, plus top-order batter Danni Wyatt, whose England career has spanned 13 years and 245 white-ball matches but who is yet to play a Test, as well as Alice Capsey, the breakout star of 2022.

Only two uncapped players were named: the Western Storm duo Lauren Filer, who boosts the seam-bowling stocks which have been lacking the retired Katherine Sciver-Brunt at Test level for 18 months, and allrounder Dani Gibson.

While he was happy with the squad's balance and a growing talent pool since the introduction of a professionalised regional structure in 2020, Lewis said he would like some time set aside for more red-ball matches - even if only over two days - at domestic level, or within squad camps.

"Primarily the hardest task is getting your fast bowlers prepared in terms of getting the amount of workload into the fast bowlers and then understanding what those fast bowlers can cope with," Lewis said. "Down the road from my point of view, even if you just played a couple of rounds of two-day cricket, that would be really advantageous.

"You don't necessarily have to play three- or four-day cricket, but at the right time in the schedule, I think playing some multi-day cricket for the girls would be would be really advantageous in terms of getting players physically better prepared, but also understanding how to play the red-ball game better than they do already."

Among the challenges for Lewis is not only a schedule that will become increasingly squeezed as global franchise tournaments take off, but the fact that Tests are played so infrequently and by only a handful of nations, which means mounting an argument for more long-form cricket at domestic level is even more precarious. But he is confident that a solution can be found eventually.

"Our most experienced Test cricketer, I think has played 10 Tests," he said. "Looking back at my own experience as a young male cricketer, I played probably 10 four-day games within the first year of me playing. It's a disproportionate amount of red-ball cricket played in the men's game to the women's game.

"Should we play some more? Yeah, I think we should in time. But we're three years into professionalism at a reasonable level, so I think given time, things will play out."

Filer joins Issy Wong and Lauren Bell, who both earned maiden international caps in last year's Test, as England press on in the post-Katherine Sciver-Brunt era. Kate Cross provides much-needed experience, while Nat Sciver-Brunt is a reliable first-change option.

"Lauren Filer is, I suppose you would call her a point-of-difference bowler, someone who bowls with more pace than probably anyone in the country and she really swings the red Dukes ball," Lewis said. "We've got a good group of really young fast bowlers, however, as an old fast-bowling coach, you always approach young fast bowlers with a bit of trepidation because you're not quite sure what they're going to deliver.

"We've got a big job in terms of a broader, longer-term view to replace Katherine with the quality that we really need. We've got, I probably would say, five or six or seven across the country that we're thinking, 'okay, there's enough quality there and enough talent there to replace Katherine long-term', but we're still building a lot a lot of that stuff into the fast-bowling group.

"We've got some really high-potential young fast bowlers, but high potential doesn't always win stuff. We need to go out there and perform so we'll be relying on them to do what they've done so far over the course of the last year when I've seen them."

Despite being fairly clear on his starting XI for the Test, which is worth four points in the multi-format Ashes series, the three-day warm-ups will also go some way to filling Lewis' data void. Wyatt will play for England A in the warm-up against Australia even though she is part of the Test squad, as will allrounder Alice Davison-Richards in a bid to boost her bowling loads and time in the middle after a minor hamstring complaint.

Incumbent Test openers Tammy Beaumont and Emma Lamb have retained their spots in the squad after impressive domestic seasons so far, Beaumont after losing her place in England's T20 squad last summer.

"Tammy was obviously not in the World Cup squad out in South Africa but she's come back to The Blaze and she's worked incredibly hard with the group there, sharing her own experiences, also incredibly hard on her own game and on her own mindset playing the game," Lewis said. "I've been really pleased with how Tammy's approached the start of the season.

"The thinking behind Danni Wyatt… I'm really keen to put her out against the Australians and see how she gets on. She hasn't played a Test match yet. She's desperate to play. It's a great opportunity for her to go and score some runs."