“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 ahead of the India series. “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.”
“If they ever saw me to be in that position, absolutely,” she said on having another go for the job. “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.”
“I guess across the last 18 months we’ve lost about two games of cricket and they’ve both been ones that matter”
Ashleigh Gardner on Australia now being without global silverware
There was a swift turnaround after that tournament into the WBBL season, and then a number of Australia players have been at the WPL with others playing WNCL ahead of the India multi-format series.
“It’s probably actually a discussion that we need to have,” Gardner said of the new leadership group. “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.”
The loss to India in the ODI World Cup semi-final means that for first time since 2017, Australia’s ICC trophy cabinet is empty. In both the ODI and T20 World Cups, the semi-final losses came after unbeaten group stages with uncharacteristic lapses from a team that for so long had been ruthless.
“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.
“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.”
Andrew McGlashan is a deputy editor at ESPNcricinfo