The former international Alex Hartley has criticised the fitness of some of England’s players involved in the country’s disappointing Women’s T20 World Cup campaign, saying that “there are girls in that side that are letting the team down”.

England were knocked out of the World Cup on Tuesday when they lost to West Indies by six wickets in Dubai, following a calamitous display in the field. “It’s really disappointing,” Hartley said on the BBC’s Test Match Special. “There are going to be a lot of questions asked and some of them, rightly so, on fitness. England need to get fitter.

“Australia have got 15 or 16 athletes, genuine athletes. You look at our team – I’m not going to name names but if you look at them, you know. There are girls in that side that are letting the team down when it comes to fitness.”

Richard Gould, the ECB’s chief executive, said player fitness in the women’s game was something “we want to improve on”. “I think athleticism in cricket is increasingly important,” said Gould, who was in Sharjah for England’s World Cup fixture against Scotland and is in Multan for the men’s Test. “I think the 1%ers are starting to be more and more important now.

“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. It’s 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 we want to continue to improve on.”

England’s disappointing performance in what was essentially a knockout game against West Indies evoked memories of other recent defeats in high-stakes matches: they lost in the final of the last 50-over World Cup in 2022, in the semi-finals of the 2016 and 2023 T20 World Cups and the final in 2018. In 2020 they were eliminated at the semi-final stage after rain forced an abandonment without a ball being bowled and India progressed to the final based on their group-stage finish.

“We have lost crunch games for such a long period of time,” Hartley, who was part of the side that won the 2017 World Cup, said. “When England come under pressure, and in particular when Sophie Ecclestone doesn’t slow things down and take wickets, everybody panics. She can’t do it time and time again. There will be questions around the captain, management, fitness, around what goes on in this England side, and rightly so.

“Things need to change. When you’ve not won a World Cup for so long, things need to change. I don’t know where that comes from. I think [England women’s coach] 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 they’ve potentially gone too far the other way, I’m not sure.”