{"id":716070,"date":"2026-06-05T03:20:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T03:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/716070\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T03:20:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T03:20:10","slug":"ash-gardner-shines-for-australia-in-icc-t20-womens-world-cup-warm-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/716070\/","title":{"rendered":"Ash Gardner shines for Australia in ICC T20 Women&#8217;s World Cup warm up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Ash Gardner will hit Australia&#8217;s Twenty20 World Cup warm-up matches full of confidence after a half-century in the last of three informal hit-outs against South Africa.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Gardner&#8217;s 66 runs from 38 balls at Arundel Castle helped Australia to an 85-run win over the Proteas, who eliminated them from the last edition of the tournament in a semi-final boilover.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Australia, the world&#8217;s top-ranked side, enter this month&#8217;s World Cup with great expectations on their shoulders, having also failed to defend their 50-over title in 2025.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/2026-05-13\/australia-announces-squad-for-women-t20-cricket-world-cup\/106673562\" data-component=\"FullBleedLink\" class=\"RelatedCard_link__rsgR9 FullBleedLink_root__lTw_U interactive_focusContext__yRhc_ interactive_defaults__AKxUU FullBleedLink_showVisited__g3Xvz\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Australia announces squad for Women&#8217;s T20 Cricket World Cup<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"Typography_base__sj2RP RelatedCard_synopsis__cFwMW Typography_sizeMobile14__u7TGe Typography_lineHeightMobile20___U7Vr Typography_regular__WeIG6 Typography_colourInherit__dfnUx\" data-component=\"Typography\">Brisbane Heat left-arm pace bowler Lucy Hamilton has been selected in Australia&#8217;s T20 World Cup squad with the experienced Darcie Brown a surprise omission.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Gardner&#8217;s fellow all-rounder Georgia Wareham (52 runs off 29 balls) chipped in with a half-century of her own to help Australia to 6-212 on Thursday (Friday AEST), when South Africa finished at 6-127 in reply.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">South Africa opener Laura Wolvaardt (47) retired just shy of her half-century, with Ellyse Perry (1-8), Annabel Sutherland (1-12) and new captain Sophie Molineux (1-16) helping rattle through her teammates.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Gardner had not made it out of single digits with the bat in either of Australia&#8217;s first two friendlies against the Proteas, but was relieved to find form.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">&#8220;I haven&#8217;t been hitting the ball that well in the nets, so to actually be able to do it more in a game scenario is certainly pleasing and gives you a lot of confidence,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/radio\/programs\/abc-sport-daily\" data-component=\"FullBleedLink\" class=\"RelatedCard_link__rsgR9 FullBleedLink_root__lTw_U interactive_focusContext__yRhc_ interactive_defaults__AKxUU FullBleedLink_showVisited__g3Xvz\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"Typography_base__sj2RP RelatedCard_synopsis__cFwMW Typography_sizeMobile14__u7TGe Typography_lineHeightMobile20___U7Vr Typography_regular__WeIG6 Typography_colourInherit__dfnUx\" data-component=\"Typography\">ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that&#8217;s making headlines.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">&#8220;The nets only kind of say one thing, and then when you actually get out in the heat of the battle, that kind of dictates where your game&#8217;s at a little bit more.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Australia will now travel to Cardiff and will face England and the West Indies on June 8 and 10 for official warm-up matches, before the tournament proper begins against South Africa on June 13.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ash Gardner will hit Australia&#8217;s Twenty20 World Cup warm-up matches full of confidence after a half-century in the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[5844,47932,64,63,740,31950,1183,588,85],"class_list":["post-716070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-abc-sport","tag-ash-gardner","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-icc-womens-t20-world-cup","tag-south-africa","tag-sport","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}