National team star and Muruwari woman Ashleigh Gardner has criticised Cricket Australia’s decision to schedule a T20 match against Pakistan for 26 January.
The second Indigenous woman to play Test cricket for Australia, Gardner said the day the first fleet arrived in Australia in 1788 was a “day of hurt and a day of mourning” for Indigenous Australians and that playing a fixture on that date did not sit well with her.
As part of its Reconciliation Action Plan, CA consults with an Indigenous advisory committee that approved the decision to play the fixture in Hobart on 26 January. The match will be the second in Australia’s three-match T20 series against Pakistan.
The Australian team will perform a barefoot ceremony before the match and wear a special Indigenous-themed jersey in a bid to celebrate Australia’s First people. CA is expected to confirm further details later on Sunday.
But AAP understands the decision to play the game on 26 January did not sit well with the playing group, of which Gardner has been a regular member since 2017.
“It is a day of hurt and a day of mourning,” Gardner tweeted. “Unfortunately this year the Australian women’s cricket team has been scheduled to play a game on the 26th of Jan which certainly doesn’t sit well with me as an individual but also all the people I’m representing.”
Gardner said she would use her profile as a professional cricketer to educate others as to the connotations of the day.
“For those who don’t have a good understanding of what that day means it was the beginning of genocide, massacres and dispossession,” she wrote. “When I take the field for this game I will certainly be reflecting and thinking about all of my ancestors and peoples’ lives who changed from this day.”
In 2021, CA became the first major Australian sporting body to phase out the term Australia Day to describe 26 January. Then-prime minister Scott Morrison criticised the decision.
The Australian women’s team last played on 26 January in 2016, and the men’s team in 2019, but Big Bash games are often scheduled for the date.
