Home-Grown Star

Ashleigh “Ash” Gardner emerged as one of Revesby Workers‘ Cricket Club’s finest talents. She developed her all-round game before eventually debuting in the Australian women’s Twenty20 team against New Zealand in 2017.

Jumping forward, Ashleigh is currently in England playing for Australia in the Women’s Ashes Series, which is played with several formats of the game. The first match was a rare 5-day match, where Ash excelled with her spin bowling taking an amazing 4 wickets for 99 runs in the first innings and an even more amazing 8/66 in the second innings – a total of 12 wickets for 165 for the match, a record tally for any Australian woman, also winning the Player of the Match award. Earlier this year she was also selected by the Gurjarat Giants to play in the inaugural Women’s Premier League in India for a huge valuation of $558,000.

At only 26 years of age, Ash has already amassed many achievements and awards including the Women’s World Cup championship in 2022, ICC Women’s T20 World Cup Championships in 2018 and 2020, Commonwealth Games Gold Medal in 2022, Women’s National Cricket League Championship in 2016-17 and 2018-19 and Women’s Big Bash League Championships with the Sydney Sixes in 2016-17 and 2017-18.  She was awarded the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup player of the Final in 2018 and the very prestigious Belinda Clark Medal in 2022, having been judged the most outstanding Australian female cricketer of the season.

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, Ash set up her Ashleigh Gardner Foundation, took up painting Indigenous art, at which she is considered to be excellent, and spent time discovering her Indigenous heritage, of which she is immensely proud.

The Ashleigh Gardner Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation established to give Aboriginal children a positive experience at school and a healthier start to the day by providing breakfast and unstructured play, encouraging them to complete their education, long term.