There's far more to Alex Hartley than a Twitter storm

NICK FRIEND: In the aftermath to last week's inadvertent spat on social media, the line from the trolls that hurt Hartley most was the one that questioned her role model status. She discusses why that is the case and the abuse she has faced

Alex Hartley is one of cricket’s bubbliest characters, and so the emotional anguish dripping from her voice on Friday morning told a story of its own.

Events of the last week have been unedifying and well-documented: the tweet, the quote-tweet, the sub-tweets, the pile-on. Twitter 101. The torrent of abuse has been unacceptable, the lines of attack often vile.

“Tom, Dick and Harry down the road telling me to go and die in a hole,” she tells The Cricketer. “You need to go and have a look at yourself.”

The initial dispute stemmed from Hartley’s attempt to humorously promote England Women’s ODI against New Zealand – a game for which she was a pundit – and Rory Burns’ subsequent response, which opened the floodgates.

Contrary to initial belief, the message at the centre of all this was sent midway through the second day of the floodlit Test in Ahmedabad, once India had been bowled out and the match was in the balance. Not, as some took it, as a mocking post-defeat jibe. Taken in that context, she recognises the irritation it could have caused. “But I don’t think I’ve deserved everything that’s happened,” she adds.

Plenty has been said and written in the days since – none better than Hartley herself, speaking to teammate and best friend Kate Cross on their No Balls podcast, the popularity of which has risen exponentially in the last six months: 45 listeners tuned in for their debut as co-hosts, while several thousand now download the show.

It is one of several strings to the bow of a World Cup winner in 2017, who deserves immense respect for the profile she has built in a game that has not always been kind to her.

Quite simply, there is so much more to Hartley, cheery and charismatic by nature but built on a steely resilience, than an inadvertent scuffle on social media.

^{Hartley captained Thunder in last year's Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy}

“The stuff that got to me was people saying I’m a bad role model,” she told Cross in a 14-minute segment well worth listening to, not just for those in cricket keen to understand the challenges facing women in sport, but for anyone wondering what it’s like to become the prey in the savagery of the internet.

“I pride myself on trying to be a really good role model and trying to show that being a professional athlete, there is a real side to it, and you can be a normal human as well. People saying that really got to me.”

And so, that is our topic of conversation – not so much the incident itself, nor particularly the après-tweet. But rather, all that Hartley stands for. In the circumstances, it was a surprise to receive an email on Thursday, offering an interview slot through her work with BT Sport. Many others might have opted to ride out what little remains of this storm away from the public eye. But having waited to first say her piece on her own terms with Cross as her trusted confidante, she is happy to talk on Zoom.

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We have spoken before: the first time in the autumn of 2017 between World Cup victory and Ashes defeat, more recently after Hartley lost her central contract at the end of 2019. That moment was a brutal nadir: “You don’t really have a reason to get up in the morning,” she admitted from a very different mental place. “There have been days when I haven’t got out of bed, there have been days when I’ve been very upset.”

When she met Tom Jones, a personal development manager for the Professional Cricketers’ Association, at a BBC media taster session around that time, she arrived hungover, unemployed and close to a breakdown.

“I went through it,” she recalls. “My mum was on the receiving end of it. She took me out for a few drinks and I got home and completely broke down. I was pulling my hair out and I was crying, I was ripping my fingernails off.

“It was something that must have been so heart-breaking for my mum to witness. But once it happened, they knew I’d come out the other side. Her and Crossy were there to pick up the pieces.”

^{England are in New Zealand for ODI and T20I series}

Eventually, she found a way out, embarking on a two-year journey of personal discovery, during which time she travelled to America and commentated at the T20 World Cup in Australia. Last June, she became a professional cricketer again, signing up on a full-time domestic deal to captain Thunder, the northwest-based regional hub in the domestic revamp of the women’s game.

That was a major decision – personally as well as financially, and the offer of a leadership position was perhaps a reminder to Hartley that she was worth more to cricket than she was letting herself believe. At one stage, she went 364 days without even having a net: the combination of a conscious withdrawal from playing the sport and the upshot of the pandemic. When she finally dusted off the cobwebs for the first time in a year, she “bowled the ball into the top net, into the side net, it was bouncing twice.” But she could laugh at herself.

Hartley says: “It was a real big step for me to accept that contract and start playing again because I was in a real bad place. I didn’t want to ever play cricket again.

“But people started to remind me that I played cricket because I enjoyed it. I absolutely fell in love with the game again last year. I feel like a kid and I feel like I have this real responsibility to remind people that: yes, it’s going to be hard; yes, you’re going to go through some pretty rough times. But you’re playing cricket with your mates and you’re there because you enjoy it.”

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That’s her job as she sees it – to educate her younger colleagues in loving what they do. Being let go by England taught her that much. If nothing else, a blow as great as that – being binned by the national system at a time when no safety net existed to soften the fall – forces an appreciation of perspective.

“I still have that desire to give it another go,” she explains. “If you were to ask me – and you did ask me a year ago – if I ever wanted to play for England again, that has changed. If I got given the opportunity, I’d be silly to turn it down.

“I don’t think I’m good enough anymore, but I will always strive to be the best person that I can. I’ve got a different role in life now: I have to bring these young kids up that are playing cricket for Lancashire and be a role model to them as well. I’ve got a much better outlook on life. Cricket isn’t life, it doesn’t pay my bills. Yes, I get paid to play but I’m doing stuff on the sidelines that I really love – and that’s talking about cricket.”

The crux of that secondary role comes in sharing her opinion. When she first stepped into punditry, that challenge caused a “real anxiety”. She worried that her former teammates “wouldn’t see me as a friend anymore and they’d see me as somebody that was there to criticise them.”

She adds: “But I’m not. I’m an England fan and I want them to do well.”

^{Hartley was part of the 2017 World Cup-winning side but has not played international cricket for two years}

And so, Hartley wonders whether the initial backlash was accentuated by the popular misbelief that she is still an England player. She was far from the only journalist or media personality to offer comment – witty or otherwise – on England’s defeat, but hers was the one pounced upon.

Two years have now passed since collecting the last of her 32 caps. Last Sunday, England head coach Lisa Keightley confessed that she had not even seen Hartley since taking the reins 15 months ago. In her absence, the spin stocks are well filled: Sophie Ecclestone, Sarah Glenn and Mady Villiers are the current incumbents, all likely to be around for several years to come.

It is why Hartley changed her profile photo to an image from her Lancashire days, to quash that frequent line of abuse.

She recalls: “People were saying: ‘Can’t believe you play for England and you’re slating the men.’ I don’t play for England. I’m a pundit. I have an opinion.

“With a lot of what happened last week, I think people – Rory or the county boys who commented – still thought I played for England. I don’t. And I’m nowhere near that team. I am so far from that team that it’s actually ridiculous that people still think I play for them.”

Does she view that lack of knowledge as a wider indictment of the treatment of women’s cricket and its relationship with the men’s game?

“Yes, bluntly,” she admits. “There is that ignorance around it. And it is a shame really. Everything that’s happened in the last week, all it would have needed was for someone to message me privately and say: ‘What’s this about? I think it looks pretty average. Why don’t you delete it?’ And I would have done.

“But I haven’t done that now because I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong. But it has sparked conversation and there are conversations going on behind closed doors. Hopefully, the education around women’s cricket will change.”

^{Hartley has also developed a successful career as a broadcaster}

Much of her disappointment in the recent aftermath has come from “things that have been handled professionally”. Hartley received an email from the ECB telling her she had “got it wrong”, while there has been no apology or further communication from the other players involved. Hartley is keen to add, though, that two members of the ECB have called to check on her wellbeing.

She is grateful to the PCA too; Jones “has been on the phone virtually every single day of the past week”.

From the “conversations going on behind closed doors”, Hartley hopes that progress will be made. The Hundred will be launched in the coming months as a men’s and women’s competition played out under the same banner. Speaking to The Cricketer  last year, Katherine Brunt explained the impact already of the new tournament’s promotion around gender equality. “It just makes you feel like you’re worth something and part of something,” she said. “That was never how we were allowed to feel.”

Burns’ tweet included a comment about “all the ‘boys’ do to support the women’s game”, which has attracted particular attention since. Hartley says there was very little – if any – crossover between England teams in her experience.

“Australia are really different because they’ve got two people (Mitchell Starc and Alyssa Healy) that are married, and that brings a natural bond and a natural closeness,” she says. “It’s different with Australia but they have got things right with the Big Bash and equal prize money. West Indies are this close-knit unit and we don’t see that in English cricket, which is a bit of a shame.”

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As for Twitter, she points to the example set by Ashley Giles, the managing director of England Men’s cricket, who tweeted personally to congratulate Tammy Beaumont on becoming the top-ranked ODI batsman in the women’s game. “He has written that tweet himself and he means it,” explains Hartley. “The support needs to start somewhere, and if it comes with a few token tweets from the men, saying: ‘Good luck girls, we’ll be watching when we can,’ it means a lot.”

As with every social media spat, though, its specifics will soon be forgotten. And, returning to the central theme of this conversation, what matters for Hartley is that she can continue her journey as an example for others to follow.

“It’s only been in the last few months of people telling me that I’m a role model and that I’m really important to women’s cricket for me to realise that I am,” she smiles.

“For me, I’m just Alex Hartley. I’m not an England cricketer. No one should be frightened to come to talk to me. I’m approachable, I’d like to think I’m a kind human. I want people to speak to me, I want to help kids play for England, I want to help kids play for Lancashire.”

BT Sport will celebrate the sportswomen, broadcasters and production team who enrich its shows on International Women’s Day