Australian all-rounder Ashleigh Gardner has been playing cricket at the elite level for almost a decade, but her most dominate year yet came in 2023.
WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following article contains images and voices of people who have died.
The 26-year-old earned herself a reputation early on in her career as one of Australia’s hardest hitters, however, over the past two years she has transformed into our most lethal bowler.
Gardner’s dynamic prowess with the bat was honoured when she won the 2022 Belinda Clark Medal, voted by her peers as the country’s leading female player, boasting half-centuries in all three formats the year prior: including a maiden Test fifty and a match-winning 73 runs in a T20I.
At that point, Gardner was operating as a genuine all-rounder, as Australia’s third-highest run-scorer and fifth-highest wicket-taker.
These days, she’s leading the pack worldwide for her work with the ball.
Not only did Gardner take more wickets in women’s internationals throughout 2023 than any other player, but the off spinner also set a record for the most wickets in a calendar year (58 in 29 games).
It doesn’t end there.
Over the past two years, Gardner has been a stand-out in almost every competition she’s appeared in, winning multiple awards — most notably as the 2023 T20 World Cup Player of the Tournament and the 2023 Women’s Ashes Player of the Series — while also fetching half a million dollars as the second-most expensive buy in the inaugural WPL Auction.
All of this has seen her nominated this month for her first Rachael Heyhoe Flint Women’s Cricketer of the Year Award and the ODI Women’s Player of the Year in the ICC Awards.
From hard-hitter to calculated bowler
This writer remembers prominent Australian commentator and former player Lisa Sthalekar once discussing what it’s like to be an all-rounder and pointing out how hard it can be to excel in both parts of the job at one time — with many finding they gravitated towards or were naturally better at one skill more so than the other throughout different stages of their career.
This theory lends itself to Gardner’s story, but there’s a little more going on.
Although there’s an idea that all-rounders are typically ‘always in the game’ that doesn’t tend to apply to the current Australian women’s team, who have been so successful, it can be hard to get a go with the bat or ball; no matter if you’re a regular in the line-up.
Gardner’s position in the middle of the batting order and Australia’s strength at the top has seen her miss out on the chance to bat in an innings 15 times over the past two calendar years in the white-ball formats.
In comparison, there’s been a lot more chance to bowl. Gardner has only missed out on bowling for Australia in four white-ball matches over that same time period.
It’s no surprise that this has therefore been a key area Gardner has focused on.
“To be honest, I felt like my bowling was the part of my game that needed the most work,” Gardner told ABC Sport, “But I also felt like it didn’t need a lot of technical work, it was more my tactics around how I bowl and the types of balls to bowl.
“Of course, when I’m at training, I’m always trying different things, but when you consider all the different formats we have to be across, I needed to fine tune what to bowl and when to bowl, as well as how to prepare myself better – knowing what I want to bowl to each batter at any point of the innings and having plan a, b and c prepared in case.
“It probably comes back to the confidence piece as well … If you bowl a couple of bad balls or overs you’re unlikely to get another go and you can lose that confidence from the captain.
“For me recently, it’s been about trying to build that trust with the captain and making sure that if they threw me the ball I would bowl well.”
Looking within
Beyond execution, there’s also been a dramatic shift in mindset for Gardner.
“I’ve felt like the growth I’ve had off the field has ultimately impacted what I’ve been able to do on the field, and I think that comes back to taking a better look at myself and getting a better understanding of the way that I operate,” she said.
“I’ve spent a lot of time with our team psychologist, learning why I react a certain way to things and the biggest thing I’ve realised is that if I’m really happy off the field, naturally that’s going to help me be successful on the field, so I feel like I’m in a really good place at the moment.
“I’m confident in my ability, I’m probably not striving or looking too far ahead in the games, but I’m still playing a really fearless brand of cricket and trying to put my team in the best position that I can.
“It comes down to being more clinical in the decisions that I’m making, compared to the past, where I would make irrational decisions rather than calculated ones, so I guess that’s probably been the biggest change – my mindset.”
Gardner shines at Trent Bridge
This new-found composure was at its best during the Women’s Ashes, when Gardner put on a record-breaking performance in the Test match.
Spin proved very handy on the final two days and Gardner was thrown the ball relentlessly by captain Alyssa Healy, as she guided the team to their first Test win in eight years.
In the process, Gardner took the best-ever figures by an Australian woman in a Test innings (8/53) and a Test match (12/165) to write her name in another chapter of the history books. What’s crazier is, we later found out she did this while battling ligament damage in her right index spinning finger.
“I expected spinners to bowl a lot that day, knowing the wicket was breaking up and I was the first to get given the ball, so I wanted to prove my worth,” Gardner said.
“It was nice to be able to take that many wickets, I’ve never taken that many in an innings before, at the same time, records are great and personal accolades are great, but it’s not something that I don’t think about when I’m playing cricket … I just want to put my team in the best position.”
“It just happened to be that we were bowling on day five and that’s probably the best time to bowl as a spinner, I knew if I could put the ball in a good enough area, over and over again, the English batters would have to try something against me … I feel like I outsmarted them to an extent.
“I came away with all the wickets, but I think every bowler did their job and helped to build enough pressure for me to take them in the end.”
Indigenous roots
Gardner’s name had already been etched in history for a different reason in 2019, when she became just the third Indigenous player to represent Australia in Test cricket — behind the likes of Faith Thomas and David Gillespie, and since followed by Scott Boland.
Sadly, Thomas passed away in April last year, missing Gardner’s epic showdown at Trent Bridge by two months and marking 2023 as a bittersweet year for Gardner as a Muruwari woman, reflecting on all the individual and team success amongst the loss of her cricketing idol.
“It was an extremely sad day when she passed away and she’s someone that I reflect on a lot when I’m playing cricket, knowing that I’m not only representing myself, but I’m also representing so many people,” Gardner said.
“She was a stalwart for Aboriginal women playing sport and her story is one that I love to reflect on, to know the adversities that she had to overcome to play for her country.
“She truly did achieve so much in her life, whether it was on the cricket field or in her nursing career, so I hope her story gets told more, it’s a wonderful story.
“I got the chance to meet her quite a few times and she was a very funny lady, she had great charismatic personality traits … she was fun, and she smiled a lot, and I guess they’re the memories that I’ll always hold onto.
“I’m very thankful that I got to meet her.”