West Indies will struggle in the Test series against England that starts on Thursday because of poor fitness and the lack of a spinner, according to their most successful captain.

Clive Lloyd said that the work ethic that made the teams of the 1970s and 1980s world-beaters was missing, in part because so few West Indians play regularly in England. “County cricket made us fitter,” Lloyd, who played for Lancashire from 1968-86, said. “We could bat several times a week in alien conditions. We enjoyed training. I’m not sure these players are brought up in the same tradition. You need to be fit to bowl four or five spells in a day. Compared with the likes of Joel Garner and Colin Croft, these guys are midgets.

“They talk about problems in the West Indies, but Sri Lanka have problems in their country and play good cricket, while Bangladesh are much better than us in the field. That was always our forte, but we have lost the work ethic.”

Lloyd was promoting Sky Sports’ live coverage of the summer’s cricket. He was a mentor for West Indies during the World Cup but has no role in the present side. Instead, he is working on a redevelopment plan for Caribbean cricket and hopes to create an academy to tackle weaknesses, such as the lack of a spinner.

West Indies have not picked a specialist spinner in their squad and Lloyd fears that will place too much pressure on the fast bowlers. “I wouldn’t want to pin my hopes on [the part-time off spin of] Chris Gayle,” he said.

Lloyd is not fully pessimistic about West Indies winning an overseas Test match against a leading nation for the first time since 2000 – “It would be interesting if Mr Pietersen is not playing,” he said – but the lack of practice before the first Test at Lord’s does not help. West Indies have only one three-day match against Somerset, starting today. “If the World Cup had finished earlier, we’d have had more games,” Lloyd said. “That is wrong. It does not give this team long to gel.”