Sydney derbies heat up in the BBL

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese presents Ollie with his special PM’s XI ‘Baggy Green’

Davies, 24, who this season has already played in the Australia A side (the national team ‘reserves’) against India A, as well as the Prime Minister’s XI – a team of ‘promising emerging players’ – against India’s top team. Both Ollie and Jackson play Sheffield Shield for NSW, known affectionately as the ‘Blues.’ But in the BBL they are friendly rivals, with Ollie on track to become one of Sydney Thunder’s leading run scorers, rising steadily up the batting order since 2020.

Even during our interview, there is some ‘friendly’ banter between Ollie and Jackson about the current BBL, with the Sydney derbies always a sell-out. While Thunder has won the tournament once, in 2016, the Sixers have been in seven finals and taken it out three times, with Jackson on the champion team back in 2021, the last time they lifted the cup.

For both Ollie and Jackson, it all started in junior cricket, with their first exposure in ‘Kanga Cricket,’ now known as ‘Cricket Blast’. “I would’ve picked up the bat, I reckon when I was three or four years old,” Ollie remembers. Once he was old enough, Ollie joined the Harbord Devils Junior Cricket Club under 11 team. With a mum from the West Indies, where cricket is like a religion, and a dad who played when he was younger, it was a large part of Ollie’s childhood, with his older sister and younger brother Joel also joining in.

From a very young age, Ollie started hitting big, scoring his first 50 in an under 11’s match at Seaforth Oval, going on to hit 93, which was ‘quite a big feat’ back then. At the tender age of 11 and 12, when some children still cry when they get out, it was not unusual for Ollie to score a century. “Scoring 100, when other people didn’t really do that, was something that opened my eyes that I could make it in cricket.”

Ollie’s parents were right behind him as the talented junior moved through the cricket pathways, playing representative cricket for Manly in the Manly Warringah Junior Cricket Association, followed by selection in the Australian under 16s and 19s. Father Kevin, a handy carpenter, even went so far as to build a cricket net in the backyard of their Curl Curl family home. Mum Simone would spend six hours a few times a week driving Ollie out to the Cricket NSW high performance facility at Blacktown, and waiting in the car. “Little things like that played a big role in helping me to where I am now,” Ollie reflects.

Ollie and brother Joel (right) have grown up playing cricket together – and now for rival BBL teams. Left: Ollie as a Harbord Devils junior

The local clubs were extremely important for Ollie’s development, he says. “I think I took that confidence moving up through the ranks, putting a lot of time into my cricket and into my batting, coming up through under 15s, under 17s, under 19s and doing well, and then taking it into first class cricket.”

Ollie made headlines in 2018 at the Australian Under 19 Championship, hitting six sixes off one over on his way to a double-ton (207 runs off 115 balls) – at the time, the most-ever runs from a single over, and first one-day double century, in the U19 Championships.

With so many good cricketers coming through the junior ranks, it can be quite difficult to make it to elite first class cricket, I suggest. “It definitely gets more selective, the higher up you go and it gets a lot tougher, especially being a batter, I would say,” Ollie states.

“It ends up being a pretty harsh game in the sense that you could have three or four bad games in a row and you end up getting dropped. I’m very lucky to be in the position I’m in.”

Jackson had a similar pathway as a junior, starting at Wakehurst Redbacks Cricket Club. Despite having ‘no idea’ about cricket, Jackson’s mum coached his under 11 side. “She saw that me and my brother Ian both loved cricket. So she wanted us to be as heavily involved in it as we could.

“Reflecting back on my career, I’m thankful to my parents for putting in that time and effort early on and giving me every opportunity to get to where I am today.”

Being a father has actually motivated Jackson to keep playing, though he is thinking about retiring next year.

“Now my kids are at the age where they really love cricket as well. That’s a huge reason why I’m still playing, because they love the fact that I’m still playing cricket. Coming home from a day’s play and my son Max has been watching me play and he is asking me heaps of questions – I really enjoy that.”

Long-format four-day matches are what Jackson enjoys most, and at NSW’s Sheffield Shield match against SA in November, he made everyone do a double turn, taking 7 wickets for 46. While he admits it is harder to stay at the top of his game now that he’s older – and a dad – he says he looks after himself better now (no more post-match beers!), and takes the time to recover. “I still enjoy every aspect about being a professional cricketer. I enjoy playing the most because I’m a really competitive person.”

Jackson loves that he can talk about his matches with oldest son Max, 5.

Celebrating his ‘5fa’ against SA last November: five wickets in one innings

For Ollie, who dreams of playing for Australia, his main objective for now is scoring more runs. “It’s literally as simple as that for me!” he laughs. For an up-and-coming batsman, where the top six Australian batters are ‘locked in,’ Ollie says it will be a ‘challenge’ to break into the side. “So basically it’s just trying to set the world on fire and try and score as many runs as I can.

“For me, it’s just trying to be consistent and ideally that would look like averaging high twenties to early thirties with a good strike rate (in T20).”

BBL gives Ollie a lot of opportunity to do just that. “I enjoy playing in front of the crowd. And the fact that you get to try and hit the ball a bit harder than other formats of cricket.”

Initially, he found the crowds quite exciting – except when they were booing his team! “I’ve never been more scared in my life going out there to bat having 25,000 people just completely against you!” he says of one match at the Gabba in Brisbane.

BBL matches can cause some tension in the Davies household, as Ollie’s younger brother Joel plays for the Sixers, swapping sides after debuting with the Thunder in 2022. They played one match together at the Thunder – and one as ‘frenemies’ in the last BBL. Ollie laughs when he recalls that his parents ‘rocked up in Thunder t-shirts.’ “They go for Thunder as I’ve been there for a while and Joel made his debut there,” he explains. “But (of course) they want Joel to do well.” Joel, 21, didn’t go easy on his big brother that day.

“I hit one hard out to deep backward point,” Ollie recalls of the match. “And I feel like if there was any other fielder there, it probably (would have made the boundary). But Joel ran across, dived and stopped it just before it got there. It was quite funny.”

As for the BBL’s 14th season, Jackson says it’s ‘business as usual’ for the Sixers. “We’ve been playing cricket together for a long time now, so it’s pretty much just business as usual for us. We’ve had some success over the last five years. We’ve won two titles, but we’ve blown a couple of chances to win probably two more in that time.

“We’ve got a really experienced team and I think in T20 cricket especially, experience is really important when it comes to the pointy end of the season playing in those big finals. I think the more times you’ve done it as a group, the better chances you’ve got.”

Ollie is quietly talking up Thunder’s prospects. “I think the last couple of years we haven’t quite got our dynamic right,” he reflects. “Whereas this year we’ve got it pretty figured out. So I think that we’ve put ourselves in a very good position to be successful this year and be a team that people (should be) worried to play. So I’m pretty excited for what’s coming this season.”

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