New Delhi, Feb 13 (IANS) Ashleigh Gardner showed her disappointment after missing out on the Australia captaincy saying she cares deeply about the team but insisted her desire to lead is still strong.
The all-rounder was seen as the favorite to take over from Alyssa Healy after her retirement last month. Instead, Cricket Australia chose Sophie Molineux in a surprise move. Gardner was named joint vice-captain with Tahlia McGrath, who has led the team 15 times before.
Before the India series, Gardner acknowledged that the decision hurt, but only because of her commitment to the group.
“You kind of have this defence mechanism where if you don’t get it you don’t want to be so disappointed that you can’t move on,” Gardner told ESPNcricinfo. “So, for me, it was like making sure that if I got it, amazing. If I didn’t, that’s okay. Obviously when I got the news that I didn’t get it, there was certainly disappointment there of course.
“It’s because I care and I care about this team and you kind of get caught up in ‘how can I influence this team in Ashleigh’s way’. But then to find out that Soph got it, I was just so excited for her. She’s an amazing person and I think the influence that I’ve seen from afar that she’s had on groups, everyone speaks so highly of her, which is a credit to her as a person but then also the way that she leads and she’s a very deep thinker of the game.”
While the captaincy opportunity slipped away this time, Gardner, 28, has not given up on her ambitions. She currently leads Sydney Sixers and previously captained Gujarat Giants in the WPL. She says she would be willing to take on the role again if the chance arises.
“If they ever saw me to be in that position, absolutely,” she said. “I love playing in this team. I love the people within this group. I think for me it’s making sure that I’ve got the outlook of: if there’s a ‘C’ next to your name, great. But you can still lead in a lot of other ways and I guess that’s something that I’ve tried to do probably the last couple of years; if I’m passionate about something and I want to be a real driver for change, still doing it, even if you’re in an official role or not. So, if that opportunity ever came up, great.”
Gardner revealed even the communication around the decision came in unusual circumstances.
“It’s probably actually a discussion that we need to have,” she said. “The other two were in Australia when they got the news, I was on a golf course in India. So it was almost like taking that news for what it was and then being able to one, get the feedback on areas that I can improve on first and foremost, and then how can I support Soph and T-Mac in whatever that is.
“It’s probably just those ongoing conversations that you need to keep having to best utilise all of us. We’re all very different people and I think we’ve got different strengths. It’s being able to support Soph in whatever that is and then ultimately whatever happens with T-Mac and I, it’s being able to just be really diligent and just be transparent with whatever that looks like in terms of the leadership group and then just where we see the team going as well.”
Beyond the captaincy discussion, Australia are facing an unusual situation. For the first time since 2017, their ICC trophy cabinet is empty after semi-final exits in both the ODI and T20 World Cups, even though they had unbeaten runs in the group stages of each.
“I still think there’s a great opportunity to understand what went wrong and those moments we’re not winning,” Gardner said. “You play a bilateral series, you work out a pretty good process to overcome the challenges. In a World Cup you play [a team] once or twice.
“So for us it’s probably just trying to understand where we lost the game and what are ways that we can try and improve, whether that’s the mindset or whether that’s under pressure and we’re not handling that as well as what we could have.
“I think looking at the World Cup as a whole, we pulled ourselves out of a couple of holes. The game against Pakistan we were 7 for 70 [76] and Beth Mooney played an amazing innings.
“There were so many aspects of that whole World Cup where our backs were up against the wall and we found a way. India had our backs right up against the wall in that semi-final and we couldn’t find a way. So it’s probably looking at the whole World Cup rather than just the semi-final. Of course, that’s the game we lost when it really mattered. I guess across the last 18 months we’ve lost about two games of cricket and they’ve both been ones that matter.”
–IANS
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