Ladder leaders not dwelling on derby defeat as they look ahead to WBBL|02 finals
Sixers see upside of Super Over defeat
Ashleigh Gardner can see the upside of Sydney Sixers' recent Super Over loss, suggesting it will benefit her team and the bigger picture of the sport.
Saturday's men's KFC Big Bash League derby at the SCG was a lopsided fizzer but the same can't be said of the Rebel Women's BBL clash that preceded it.
The Sydney Thunder pushed the match to a Super Over after scoring one run off the final delivery. Both sides then managed eight runs from their additional over, with the Thunder declared winners by virtue of hitting more boundaries.
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It was a bitter defeat for the ladder-leading Sixers, especially Gardner, who faced the final ball of the super over, but also an absorbing Twenty20 contest that captured plenty of interest.
"To have that televised on Channel 10 is a pretty awesome thing. I heard we had almost half a million people watching," Gardner said.
"We had 17,000 people cheering us on at the end.
"For women's sport on the whole that's an awesome thing, to have that great exposure. Hopefully in the next couple of years we'll get crowds closer to that for normal games."
Gardner has played a key role in the Sixers locking up a WBBL finals berth, scoring 326 runs and snaring six wickets this season.
The 19-year-old scored 54 during her side's innings last Saturday then faced a single delivery during the super over, scoring one.
Gardner, who could make her Commonwealth Bank Southern Stars debut later this summer, was initially unsure about the result and sensed there may have been a better way to split two sides.
"Especially in the women's game, where girls don't hit as many boundaries as the men do," she said.
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But the talented teenager and her team aren't dwelling on the defeat ahead of clashes with Melbourne Renegades at North Sydney Oval on Friday and Saturday, their last regular-season games before finals start.
"Reflecting as a team in the past couple of days, we haven't seen it as a loss as such," Gardner said.
"We only hit two less boundaries than them.
"You do see teams in any sport that go on a massive winning streak then seem to lose one of the games that actually really matters.
"So it's probably not so bad that we did come away with a loss."