Australian cricket star Ash Gardner has broken her silence on the teammate affair that led to the break down in her marriage.
Gardner was publicly outed by her now ex-wife Monica Wright earlier this year, who revealed a secret affair involving teammate Georgia Voll.
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It is believed the affair began at the Women’s World Cup in India last year, with Gardner since apologising to her former partner for the pain caused.
Gardner has now spoken to CODE Sports about the affair and subsequent fall out for the first time, suggesting her reputation has been “tarnished”.
“My reputation has been tarnished with the public, but I guess something that I always try to strive to do when representing any team that I play in is be the best teammate that I can, and hopefully show what this team means to me when I’m playing for them,” she told CODE Sports.
“Playing sport at a high level, you’re open to having a platform, and sometimes with this comes interest from the public, and they want to know things about your personal life, and they invest, and then can make judgment either way of what you are or aren’t doing.”
Despite being Australian vice-captain, Gardner admits she did not think news of her affair would garner the level of interest it did.
She described her thinking as “naive”, and was caught by surprise when Monica took to social media to reveal the details of the cheating scandal.
“This is who my wife cheated on me with,” Monica wrote alongside a photo of Voll.
“I was certainly surprised, as you could imagine,” Gardner added.
“I certainly didn’t expect the situation to take the path that it did, or to become as public as what it did. But I also understand that everyone has their own way of dealing with difficult situations.
“I guess for me, the important thing (is) over this last period, I’ve obviously had time to reflect on what’s happened and making sure to have those conversations with the people that I’ve needed to, whether that’s internally and just focus on moving forward for the team. I think (that) is the most important thing.
“I can understand obviously (Monica’s) perspective. So for me, it was trying to, I guess, stay positive in what was a pretty tricky time with this being so public and probably going further than maybe what I thought, so maybe that was me being a little bit naive.
“But I think just making sure that I was trying to find the good in the situation of I guess what I was doing at the time.”
– You can read the full story at Code Sports