Despite missing one match, Gardner’s outstanding performances earned her the Player of the Series award. She claimed three wickets in the second game and contributed a vital 33 off 26 balls in the final match, wrapping up the series with 51 runs and four wickets.

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Reflecting on the injury, Gardner shared her thoughts with a mix of humor and relief, acknowledging the odd turn of events.

“First, it was probably the first [warm-up] game that we played before a match in a very long time and I feel like as a team, we don’t have a great track record of not getting injuries before a game or even just throughout those games. But yeah obviously, accidents happen and Georgia Wareham and I probably have hard heads and we found that out the hard way,” Gardner said on a lighter note.

“It was a bit of a weird one, obviously having a head collision is probably not something that you expect at a cricket match. There was obviously concussion protocols that I had to follow. I wasn’t actually concussed in the end, it was what was necessary at the time. Hence why I got back for the second game in such a short amount of time.

“It was a pretty weird couple of days. Obviously had a really sore jaw over those first couple of days as well but certainly felt pretty back to normal come that second game and then last night [for the final game] as well.”