Lizelle Lee cites fear of being dropped, denial of NOC for foreign leagues due to lack of fitness as reasons for retirement

The cricket fraternity was shocked when Lizelle Lee announced her retirement from international cricket. She has finally opened up about her retirement and acknowledged that her unexpected exit from international cricket was caused by the fact that she did not match the CSA’s fitness standards.

Lee disclosed that she was on the brink of being dropped from the South African squad that toured England after failing some segments of the fitness assessment, and the no-objection certificate to play in foreign leagues would have been rejected.

She thus made the decision to discontinue playing for the national team, which eliminated the requirement for NOCs to play for T20 clubs. Before the team departed South Africa, Lee had to pass a fitness test, which is when the problem reached its peak. Due to the expense of travel, she requested to conduct it in Ermelo, in the North-West Province of South Africa, as opposed to the CSA’s headquarters in Johannesburg.

The team’s fitness coach instructed Lee to have her skinfold measured after she weighed herself and reported the data to him. Later that day, Lee went to see a biokineticist in Ermelo for that test, but she skipped another weigh-in since it varied and it was thin margins.

“I’m not going to do it again because if it’s over (the limit), I won’t be eligible for the England tour,” she mentioned during BBC’s Stumped podcast.

She admitted to the biokinetics that she had kept track of her own weight. After being chosen for the tour, she underwent another test when she arrived in England in early July. According to Lee, this time, her “skinfolds were down, but the weight wasn’t even close to where I thought it’d be”.

“We have to make sure, especially with women, the things that really count have to count more – like running and skills, all of those things that actually contribute towards winning instead of how people look,” Lee said on the podcast.

Lee was questioned by CSA, who found that the biokineticist had not confirmed Lee’s weight. On July 5, Lee sent an email to CSA staff in which she admitted that she should have retested her weight but had refrained because she was worried that it may vary from the morning and might result in her not being picked. She also acknowledged that this was incorrect and that she should have finished it there.

Lee received an email the next day, July 6, informing her that she will be dropped from the group. Additionally, CSA stated that it would use its discretion to deny her a NOC for league matches unless she “met and maintained workload and fitness requirements.” They anticipated she could focus on her form while she was at home because they were equally concerned about it.

It was a lot of money, we needed it: Lizelle Lee

Since Lee had recently become a parent, she was worried that she wouldn’t receive a NOC in time for The Hundred, which could have had significant financial ramifications. “It was a lot of money. We needed it. We’re a young family. So I just said I was going to retire,” Lee added.

“I understand the running; if you don’t make the running, they don’t see you as fit enough to play, which I think is probably fine. The big thing that just got me is that I made fitness physically, I did the running that I had to do. Basically, I’m fit to play, and I had this conversation with them before Ireland because I got dropped in Ireland because of my weight as well,” she said.

“I told them ‘,you’re dropping me because of the way I look and how much I weigh’ and they said ‘no, we’re dropping you because you failed the fitness battery’. I said ‘yes, but if you break the fitness battery down, what did I not make? I made the fitness, the running, but not the weight. So you’re dropping me because of weight’. So as a woman, that breaks me,” Lee added.

Lee urged for a thorough reexamination of the fitness test procedure, particularly for female candidates. “We have to make sure, especially with women, the things that really count have to count more – like running and skills, all of those things that actually contribute towards winning instead of how people look,” she concluded.