Trent Rockets captain Ash Gardner ends dramatic week with Hundred T20 title: ‘Can’t fault her’

Australia vice-captain Ash Gardner has ended a dramatic week by steering her Trent Rockets side to a handsome victory in the final of the Women’s Hundred tournament in England.

Gardner’s triumph at Lord’s on Sunday (Monday AEST) came just three days after she’d apologised for the pain caused by her marriage breakdown and thanked Cricket Australia for supporting her following revelations of her relationship with national teammate Georgia Voll.

The 29-year-old skipper hit the winning boundary in the Rockets’ eight-wicket stroll over Sunrisers Leeds — just six weeks after she and Rockets’ teammates Beth Mooney and Kim Garth had all featured in Australia’s T20 World Cup final triumph, also at the home of cricket.

Gardner, who’d proved an inspirational skipper over the past month overseeing just one Rockets’ loss in nine matches, took 1-23 and ended nine not out, with Mooney once again proving peerless in a white-ball final with her match-winning 31no at the other end.

Seamer Garth had earlier started the rout of the Sunrisers, with two quick wickets in three balls as the reigning champions, even with player-of-the-tournament and leading scorer Annabel Sutherland, Phoebe Litchfield and Jess Jonassen all in fine form, crumbled to a run-a-ball 91 all out.

Gardner got just about everything right from the moment she won the toss and put Leeds in to bat — just as she has done over the whole tournament in which she’d scored 107 runs, took 11 wickets and held six catches.

“She’s led from the front brilliantly — can’t fault her,” said player-of-the-match Georgia Adams of her skipper.

Gardner herself hit the winning runs with a glorious back-foot drive off Jonassen.

The veteran Englishwoman Adams, in her fifth Hundred final, proved Gardner’s key weapon on the day, first taking the leaping catch at short fine-leg that dismissed a lap-scooping Litchfield, who’d raced menacingly to 10 off five balls with a four and six.

Adams (2-9 off 15 balls) then deceived Sutherland, getting her stumped by Mooney, just as the allrounder had threatened to bail out the Sunrisers with 25 off 23 balls, before also fashioning the run-out of Jonassen for a duck with a smart bit of fielding.

With such a small target to aim at, Mooney’s enduring excellence proved invaluable again as the left-handed champion, who averages 72 in white-ball finals, went into familiar brisk, businesslike mode.

She moved to 31no off 21 balls, with four fours, still being there at the end after opening partner Sophia Dunkley had fallen for a breezy 41 off 23.

“It’s just instilling belief. I’m never going to ride the emotion of what happens out on the field,” enthused Gardner.

“You bowl a bad ball, we drop a catch, it is what it is. You can’t always just go back to those moments and have to reflect on them, but I think I always see it as a learning opportunity.