It has taken Muriwai allrounder Ashleigh Gardner just as many Tests to wear the Baggy Green cap as it has years.

Hard to imagine that one of Australia's star female cricketers has accumulated one Test across each calendar year, except during the 2020 peak of the pandemic while in isolation before three years later playing away Tests once in England and India each, but not on home soil.

Scott Boland, who after his most recent SCG Test heroics, has been called the best bowling reserve in the world behind an attack of Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Heazlewood, has at least had one of the three Australian pacemen go down injured 13 times for the Gulidjan paceman to be included for that much Test cricket across four years.

The comparison for Gardner has a lot more to do with scheduling in the Test arena for women cricketers than a lack of selection.

Gardner wants that to change and is leading the calls for more than one Test per year ahead of the upcoming female Ashes series that includes three one-day internationals and three Twenty20 internationals, but just the one-off Test match against England amid a multi-series format.

The Ashes series starts with a 50-over clash at North Sydney on Sunday during a congested three-week schedule.

The introduction of the multi-format concept back in 2013 only heightened the interest in women's cricket to new levels and the next step in that evolution looked to be playing more Test matches than less, as a key piece of the sport rather than as a unique novelty that Gardner wants to shed altogether.

"We have good white-ball games against England and other teams around the world, but the way our teams match up, it would be a really cool Test series (to play more Test matches)," Gardner said at a press conference in Sydney.

Not since 2006 has more than a single Test match been played in a female series while the shortened formats in some weaker cricket nations remain the only form of the sport.

But Gardner, who made her Test debut in 2019, said while the multi-format series that hands out different points for Test wins as they do for one-day and T20 internationals has proven to be successful to decide the overall series, Australian and English players are ready to focus on three Tests too for the first time since the 1998 women's Ashes.

"It is obviously going to make the tours a lot longer," Gardner said.

"I am not sure where you are going to fit it in, knowing we have to play overseas as well. But personally I would love to see three, three and three (of each format)

"I would just love to play more Test cricket against England. Playing the one Test feels like a bit of a novelty at times."

Despite a lack of a national first-class competition in Australia that would need to be addressed, Gardner's Test record is as good as any woman in the game.

The offspinner took 8-66 in the concluding innings of the most recent Ashes Test played at Trent Bridge back in 2023.

"It was obviously a lot of fun to be able to bowl on a wicket like that which was starting to turn and a spinner you want it to," Gardner said.

She has picked up 23 wickets at an average of 21.0 in those six Tests that included match figures 12-125 in that last Test appearance against England

The second Indigenous woman to have played Test cricket behind fast bowler Faith Thomas, who retired after just the one Test due to a commitment to her nursing job in Adelaide for the next two tours to both England and New Zealand, Gardner averages 31.22 with the bat that included three half-centuries in the Australian middle-order.

While Gardner highlighting the number of Tests is unlikely to prompt change in not-so-distant future, an expected new world-record attendance for the day-night Test match played at the MCG from January 30 will nonetheless cast a lot of eyes on women's Test cricket.

"(The Ashes Test) is almost as big as a World Cup – we always speak about England being our oldest rivals," she said.

Cricket Australia has said the women's Ashes in January will mark the last time international women's cricket is played during the school holiday window over other predestined commitments until at least 2029.

The current record crowd for Test matches in which Gardner starred in that same 2023 Test that Australia defeated England was only a modest 23,207 over the five days.

"Hopefully we can pack out the MCG – again," Gardner said in reference to the T20 World Cup final's own record attendance against India in March 2020.

"Being able to play a Test match at the MCG is certainly a bucket-list item for a lot of players I'd imagine."