Ashleigh Gardner's 'dream' spell puts enthralling Test match to bed

Taking eight wickets in an innings and 12 in a match is, quite literally, what dreams are made of for Ashleigh Gardner.

A largely sleepless night spent visualising how she was going to get England's remaining five batters out paid dividends for Australia's premier offspinning allrounder as her side went four points up in the Women's Ashes with an 89-run victory in the Test at Trent Bridge, attended by 23,207 people over the course of five days.

The momentum of the match had swayed this way and that throughout but Gardner produced two key spells that ultimately sealed victory for the Australians.

Her three wickets for nine runs in the space of 17 balls on the penultimate evening removed the threat posed by Tammy Beaumont - in fine touch having made a double-century in England's first innings - calm captain Heather Knight and the big-game performer Nat Sciver-Brunt and left her with 3 for 33 at the close.

Having taken 4 for 99 to be the pick of Australia's bowlers first time out, that was already a huge contribution to the team and one that meant England went into the final morning still needing 152 runs with five wickets in hand.

But she didn't stop there, picking up all five of those remaining wickets to deliver victory and claim the best match figures for an Australian woman in Tests and the second-best in women's Test history.

"I was awake at 3am this morning and I was actually thinking about bowling, which is a bit tragic, but I was wide awake literally thinking about how I was going to get the batters out," Gardner said. "I've never done that before, so maybe that helped and hopefully I can do that a bit more.

"On a wicket like the one that we just played on, it was deteriorating and we spoke as a whole bowling unit just to keep the stumps in play because we knew that there was going to be some variations whether the ball bounced or whether the ball stayed really low, or it turned and I think I got all of them.

"Some balls stayed really low and then some almost didn't turn they almost went the other way. So to keep the stumps in play to keep all modes of dismissal in was super important for us. We bowled really well in partnerships, which is what we speak about, especially in Test match cricket.

"There's so many ebbs and flows and if you can at least build a partnership with both bat and ball, it puts you in pretty good stead because as soon as batters feel a little bit of pressure or maiden overs or they're not scoring, that kind of brings wickets as well."

On the final morning, Gardner had nightwatcher Kate Cross caught behind by Alyssa Healy, who chimed in again with the pivotal stumping of Amy Jones, which left England with just one recognised batter, Danni Wyatt, at the crease and turned the tide definitively. She trapped Sophie Ecclestone lbw and then homed in on Lauren Filer's off stump before rapping Wyatt on the pad for 54.

"That's pretty special," Gardner said. "If you asked at the start of the day if I was going to end up with figures like that, I would have dreamt of it. But I guess for me it's those types of performances that I dream of doing for the team and putting my team in winning positions, ultimately to win games.

"To take eight wickets in an innings is something that I've never done before and to do it on international stage is certainly pretty special. I think six is the most and I was pretty chuffed with that. So to take eight and then 12 for the game, it's something that I'm going to remember for the rest of my life and certainly for the rest of my career and something that I can be really proud of in English conditions.

"But more importantly, to have five days in a Test match to actually get that result… I was really happy to come here today and try and put a good performance in for my team."

Gardner hadn't had the most ideal preparation, suffering a blow to the end of her bowling finger while practising her slips fielding during Australia's three-day warm-up match, which "annoyed the ligaments".

But it was years of honing her craft, to make her bowling as destructive as her batting, that set up this performance. Gardner sent down 45.2 overs in all, still fewer than Sophie Ecclestone, England's left-arm spinner, in claiming just one of her two five-wicket hauls for the match during Australia's first innings. But Gardner's fourth-innings 8 for 66 proved the difference.

"It was about trusting what I'd already done," Gardner said. "I wasn't going to lose a skill overnight and it was just being able to trust that and know my good stuff was good enough.

"Then, coming into this Test match knowing that I could have played a really big role, bowled a lot of overs, we saw how many overs Sophie Ecclestone was bowling so we knew that spin was going to be effective throughout.

"We came in with three spinners so I knew that I wanted to keep bowling overs and for Midge [Healy] to keep putting me back on was to bowl consistently and I was lucky enough to come away with a few wickets and bowl plenty of overs."

Healy hoped that this performance would prove to be a landmark in the 26-year-old Gardner's career.

"There's a big group of us that are over 30 now… and I'm not retiring anyone in the room and I'm not retiring myself either, but if you look at our squad, this is a large group of us there," Healy said.

"Then there's a group in that middle period that have sort of just found their feet in the international game and I think Ash is one of those key personnel that's still got another 10 years-plus in the game and is confident enough in her ability and her skills to be able to go out there and compete time after time.

"She's going to be a real leader in this group for a long period of time so I hope that today gives her that confidence. I'm sure it will, but I'm sure it showed everybody just the type of player that she is and hopefully she believes that herself."