‘Sorry for the pain this has caused’: Gardner’s public apology to her ex as CA stands by the vice captain

Darwin: Ash Gardner has broken her silence after she was endorsed to continue as Australia’s vice captain by the Cricket Australia board, but will have to leave any leadership meeting when the selection of her partner Georgia Voll is discussed.

The relationship between Gardner and Voll, which commenced at last year’s ODI World Cup in India and led to the breakup of Gardner’s marriage, has been tabloid fodder in recent weeks, leading to further CA conversations around her role as Sophie Molineux’s deputy.

“While my separation from my wife is a personal matter, I understand my current relationship status needed to be addressed by Cricket Australia given my position as vice-captain,” Gardner wrote on Instagram on Thursday.

“I am grateful that the CA Board has chosen to support my continued leadership. I look forward to playing a strong role as a leader and providing the best possible support for my teammates in the season to come.

“I am grateful for the time Monica and I shared and sorry for the pain this has caused. I wish her nothing but happiness and success in the future. I won’t be making any further public comment on this matter at this time and ask that the privacy of those involved is respected.”

CA chief executive Todd Greenberg said it was important that any conflict of interest, either perceived or actual, was handled transparently for the sakes of Gardner, Voll and the team, which recently won the Twenty20 World Cup in the UK.

As vice captain, Gardner is not a selector either at home or on overseas tours, but she is part of leadership meetings and may be consulted about team selection from time to time. She would also step up as acting captain for Molineux in case of injury.

“It wasn’t debated, but it was discussed yesterday at the board level,” Greenberg told this masthead on Thursday.

“The board asked for an update on it, which we provided, and the outcome of that is the board are very supportive of Ash in the vice captaincy, [with a] huge and high regard for Ash.

“We’ve got a respect at work policy, which we’ve now put some additional measures in place because we want to make sure that either the perception or the real conflict of [interest in] selections, even though a vice captain doesn’t have a say in selections in the team, the leadership role and the influence that that person might have, to put guardrails in about how the policy works. Outside of that, we’ve deemed it a personal matter.”

Asked directly whether Gardner would have to recuse herself from any discussions of Voll with Molineux, coach Shelley Nitschke or the national selectors, Greenberg confirmed she would.

“We think that’s important,” he said. “Even if there’s not a conflict, even if there’s a perceived level of conflict, not just from the outside, but from other teammates or from staff. We’re in some difficult territory here because, like all sports, we’re all learning a little bit about how these high-performance environments can operate.

“So we want to be making sure that our policies are keeping up with the realities, and I think that’s exactly what we’ve done. So the board was super supportive of Ash, and have been since the start.”

Greenberg also confirmed CA was in the market for another betting sponsor following the end of its long-term deal with Bet365, but acknowledged that imminent changes to government legislation around gambling advertising would likely reduce the next partner’s visibility and the dollar value of the deal.

Toyota has replaced Bet365 on the boundary rope signage at Test matches, and Greenberg said that conversations had evolved to how to communicate with existing customers of wagering companies without advertising aggressively to the wider public.

“We’re in active conversations with partners, and you know we’re not shying away from that,” Greenberg said. “We’ve purposely kept it out of the Big Bash for obvious reasons. But [it’s] highly probable we’ll have a wagering partner for the summer.

“But there’s no doubt that the legislative changes will make that slightly more difficult in order to execute a deal, because it may not be as lucrative for them. So we understand the realities of that, but that’s the reality we have to deal with as part of the changes that have been made by government.

“If it’s at a certain level now, it’s only going to get lower, not higher. The wagering partnerships are less about above-the-line activity, and it’s more about how do they talk to people who want to bet? Because betting is a pastime for lots of people in this country, and so there’s lots of people who like to bet on cricket. We’ve got to figure out how we talk to those people and not talk to our broader audience.”

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