When the phone rang to tell Joel Davies he would be making his Australia debut against Bangladesh in June, he didn’t pick up the first time. He was playing cards in another room with teammates.
“There were a couple of knocks on the door that I didn’t hear, and then eventually I heard the doorbell ring,” he recounted to Sportstar after a training session at the MRF Pace Foundation here. “It was Tony Dodemaide, the selector, who pulled me out of my room when I was playing cards with Aaron Hardie, Josh Phillippe and Matt Renshaw, and told me that I was debuting.”
The following day, Davies claimed figures of three for 17 in the first of three T20Is, accounting for Bangladesh’s Parvez Hossain Emon caught on the boundary as his maiden scalp with his second ball. Overall, his first stint with the national side yielded four wickets at an average of 14.50 and economy of 7.50.
“When I saw the ball go up in the air, I thought it was going for six because it looked like it was going a long way,” he reminisced of that Emon wicket. “Luckily it was to the big boundary into the wind and I got saved by that. I was pretty nervous when I got the ball. It was obviously very hot, so I was sweating a lot and was worried that I might bowl the ball at the batter’s head, that wouldn’t have been a good way to start!
“But just to play in the Australian team alongside some of those players was a pretty surreal moment and one I won’t forget for a long time.”
Two months later, he has swapped the green and gold for a training jersey as he looks to refine his skills with a third stint in Chennai, but he remains the same person he was before international honours came calling.
“Nothing too different to be honest, other than obviously having the Australian cap,” he said about how his life had changed. “I think my mindset is still the same. I come back here trying to learn and better myself in these different conditions because I don’t think anyone can really master it.”
From seamer to spinner
Davies’ rise is a remarkably quick one for a player who once described himself as “a batter who bowled some left-arm seam-ups” in his youth.
The turning point came during the Green Shield, an Under-16 competition in Sydney, where he found himself staring at the prospect of missing out for his side. “My coach told me that I wasn’t going to get picked in the team as a fast bowler, but they needed a left-arm spinner, so if I wanted to do that, I’d probably get picked. So I just sort of picked that up and I went ‘OK’.
Then another coach told me to stick with it, because no one else in my family is very tall. So, I wasn’t going to be a tall, fast bowler. So, I stuck with that, and it’s turned out OK so far for me,” he explained with a smile.
Davies – who names his former New South Wales and Sydney Sixers teammates Stephen O’Keefe and Nathan Lyon among his inspirations – opted to stick with spin despite a lack of favourable conditions in Australia, noting that having multiple strings in his bow makes him a more appealing package.
“Never really crossed my mind too much because I feel like every team has a spin bowler,” he explained when asked if he had any apprehensions about being a spinner. “If I’m a batter who can bowl spin, then I can also get picked as a batter and a part-time spin bowler.
Obviously, now I’d love to be picked as the front-line main spin bowler, but if it means that they pick a leg spinner who bowls most of the overs, then I can help out and bat along with that.”
A breakout Big Bash year
Davies’ ascent to the senior team has come on the back of a breakout year for Sydney Sixers in the 2025-26 Big Bash League (BBL) season. He picked up 14 wickets (his previous best was one) at an average of 20.93 and an impressive economy rate of 6.23, and scored 135 runs at a strike-rate of 159.30.
Across the season, he moved quickly from being a player on the periphery of the XI – neither batting nor bowling in the first match against Perth Scorchers – to becoming one of its most vital members, even delivering a Player of the Match performance against Hobart Hurricanes in the Challenger to take the team to the final.
Davies credited a spell of three for 24 against local rival Sydney Thunder as the turning point of the season, saying, “That gave me the confidence in myself that I was good enough to play at that level. And then to consistently get backed by the coaching staff and the captain (Moises Henriques) to bowl difficult overs was a huge boost for me. It just helped with my self-belief that I was good enough to be there, and I think that helped me perform a lot better.”
In keeping with his first international wicket, 10 out of Davies’ 14 wickets across the season were catches in the outfield, a sign that he has the ability to defend himself against ever-more attacking batters in T20 cricket.
“I’m definitely not the sort of spinner to be turning one sideways or bowling them and catching the edge,” he reflected. “For me, it’s just trying to limit the runs and get batters hitting more parts of the ground where they’re not as comfortable and where I have the field set. That way, if they hit me for six, that’s a good shot, but hopefully they don’t.
If they don’t get it good enough as I execute well, it means they hit it to a fielder. Even just through building pressure, through dot balls or even singles in T20 cricket, I might get a bad shot from them that they might not normally play.”
Sixers influence
Having broken through at the Sixers, one of the most successful franchises in the competition (they have made the final eight times in 15 editions), Davies has broken through surrounded by several senior players with winning pedigree, including O’Keefe, long-time captain Henriques, James Vince, Daniel Hughes, and Jordan Silk.
He is decisive about their influence. “O’Keefe’s obviously been the biggest one, just sort of picking his brain and seeing how he goes about bowling. Very similarly to me, he’s not a big spinner at the ball, so it’s sort of wearing down the batter and trying to get them to play a bad shot,” he noted.
“Henriques has been unreal; obviously he’s been around for, it seems like, hundreds of years. I think he’s such a good leader. If he sort of sees something that he doesn’t think is right with me, he’ll always come and have a chat, whether I’m bowling or batting, after I’ve got out or when we have the 10-over break. I think he knows my game really well, so it was really nice having him there.”
Being a part of the Sixers dressing room also means that he has played alongside the side’s returning Test players, including Mitchell Starc and most notably Steve Smith, who has scored 472 runs at an average of 78.67 in nine appearances across the last two seasons.
“I think it definitely gives the team an extra confidence boost. I think when you’ve got someone coming back that – I think in the last two or three years, he’s averaged about 70 runs every game – that’s always very nice.
“But also just having his cricket smarts around. If you want to sort of ask him anything, he’s always open to talk about cricket, and also he’s one of the best fielders in the world — he barely drops a ball that comes to him. So it’s nice having him around,” Davies reflected.
The upcoming season will also see him reunited with his brother Oliver, who has played for rival Sydney Thunder until now. The pair played two games together for Thunder at the start of Joel’s BBL career (Oliver gave him his cap), and he is relishing the prospect of adding to that tally.
“I think growing up, he was definitely a massive inspiration for me. He forged a path for me to follow him. So it’s nice having him move across to the Sixers now as well, and fingers crossed I can play with him for New South Wales,” he said glowingly.
Red-ball on the horizon
In the short term, Davies is looking to utilise his time in Chennai to refine both his batting and bowling, and with the BBL16 set to start later this year, he will be keen to prove last year’s showing was not a one-off.
But beyond that, he boasts ambitions of playing all three formats. His long-form experience is limited to five First-Class matches for New South Wales for now, but he has his eyes set on this year’s Sheffield Shield season.
“I sort of got a little taste of it at the back end of last year after the Big Bash, and I think I went OK, but not as good as I’d hoped to. So yeah, I’ve definitely got ambitions to play for Australia at the higher level in all three formats.
Fingers crossed, I can have a successful year in the Sheffield Shield. And if something were to come up, I’d be very grateful for that and take it with both arms. But at the moment, I’m just trying to keep developing my game back in Sydney for New South Wales.”