Over the Christmas period, the Journal’s sports team will be re-sharing some of the most popular stories from over the course of 2024.
Thank you for supporting our newspapers over the course of the year. We hope you enjoy the selection and have a wonderful holiday period, however you choose to celebrate.
Comfortably the biggest cheer of the afternoon in the aftermath of Buckley Ridges’ Dandenong District Cricket Association was reserved for Michael Davies.
The man commonly known as ‘Slick’ in local cricket circles was gunning for his first Turf 1 premiership from seven attempts, and with sand plummeting from his career hourglass, time was running out.
His laid-back personality combined with undeniable talent, with a Wookey Medal and multiple Turf 1 Team of the Year selections to show for it, made him one of the competition’s more popular players.
But for all the personal achievements, he lacked the one that mattered most to him.
He’d come so close the prior two years, and in 2022 he was unfortunately in the middle when the final wicket fell in Buckley’s chase of 226.
When his partner, Westley Nicholas was run out with a direct hit from the boundary, Davies, having reached the Striker’s end and seen his opponents sprinting past him to initiate chaotic celebrations, slapped the stumps with his bat, contrasting the frenzy of victory with the heartbreak of defeat.
Two years on, as he reached the centre of the pitch to join celebrations on Sunday, he quickly found himself in the centre of a huddle as his teammates mobbed him like a popstar in a crowd.
“All I wanted in the DDCA was to win a Turf 1 flag and now I’ve finally got it,” Davies said.
“I’ve been on the sad side for six years and finally I’m on the winning side.
“This one’s going to go down really well.”
On Saturday, he put his big shots away and ground out a tough 29 from 67 deliveries late in the innings, and grabbed the wickets of Brayden Sharp and Jordan Mackenzie in the defence 24 hours later.
When he beat Mackenzie’s defences to grab his second scalp, he turned to cover and embraced Jayson Hobbs in a mighty hug before teammates converged.
Later, when Hobbs called him forward to collect his premiership medallion, he gave his eyes a quick wipe before the two repeated the hearty embrace.
When he walked back to the group, and his devoted children in Buckley Ridges tops with their dads’ name on the back, he gripped the medal tight, as if it would somehow be taken away, as the enormity of the achievement began to take hold.
As Jordan Wyatt rode his luck with the bat, surviving multiple dropped chances, Davies feared the worst, that the triumph would be cruelly stripped from him at the final hurdle once again.
But this occasion was different.
Former skipper Ben Wright said the players used Slick’s hunger for success as motivation, saying, “We take the hurt that Slicks had in previous years, not at the club, and we wanted to win trophies for him.”
Davies found words difficult to come by as he was showered with good will, but reinforced his gratitude.
“It means a lot, I’ve got a lot of mates that play for different clubs and I’ve been hard on the ground for 10-15 years,” he said.
“Everyone saying that they really want me to get one, and I finally got it.”
His contributions with bat and ball will be long remembered in Buckley blue, no matter what his playing future looked like.
“The mind thinks that I can go until I’m 50 but the body, getting older now with two kids, we’ll see how we go,” he said when asked about his playing future.
“I got a lot of stick for going there (To Buckley Ridges) but they’ve been so successful over the years and all I wanted was a Turf 1 flag, and I’ve finally got it.
“You can always keep going and going, but flags are very hard to come by.”
