Joel Davies has a space for cricket memorabilia at his home in New South Wales. After an impressive debut for Australia in Bangladesh - he took a match-winning 3 for 17 in the first T20I - the 22-year-old left-arm fingerspinner added his maiden Australia cap to his beloved memorabilia collection. His debut success began to sink in only after he returned home and caught up with his family.
"So I've got my New South Wales baggy blue and my Australian cap in my room now," Davies tells Cricinfo on the sidelines of a training session at the MRF Academy in Chennai. "Nathan Ellis gave the cap to me with a nice speech. Alongside, funnily enough, I have my manly grade cricket hat, which is my club. They're sort of my big three hats I've got at the moment. Fingers crossed there's more to be added to that.
"I think it probably didn't sink in everything until I got back home when I guess I saw my family and my girlfriend. They were so excited and I realised how big of a deal it actually was what I'd done."
Joel even had an opportunity to claim bragging rights over his older brother Ollie Davies, who also represents NSW in domestic cricket. After playing together at Sydney Thunder in the BBL, the brothers will re-unite for Sydney Sixers in the next BBL season.
"Yeah, (bragged about the debut) a little bit," Joel quips. "No, Ollie was very supportive and very loving of how well I did. But yeah, it was nice to have a little bit of brotherly rivalry and to get the wood over him to play for Australia first."
Joel is back to the grind once again and has ramped up his preparation for the Australia home summer with a two-week stint on spin-friendly surfaces at the MRF Academy, with Tim Paine overseeing the camp.
"It was sort of back to reality pretty quick with NSW training and straight back into fitness," Davies says. "Yeah, lots of running and getting pretty tired throughout every day when they were working us really hard.
"The conditions are different here. In Australia there's limited turn and here it's renowned for spin and turn. So just learning from exposure to these conditions. And whether that's successful or not, I think it's going to be a massive part in potentially coming back [to India] in the near future for red-ball cricket or T20 cricket. It's going to be a great learning experience for everyone here."
While Davies has played only five first-class matches so far and is more of a BBL star with four seasons under his belt, he has ambitions of becoming an all-format player for Australia.
"I think right now I'm still young enough to play every format," Davies says. "But I think alongside playing as much cricket as I can, that will help develop my skills in four-day cricket, one-day cricket and T20 cricket. So I think I'm definitely not limiting myself at the moment. Definitely have aspirations to play Test cricket for Australia at some point in my career. That would be really nice."
Davies had a particularly strong BBL season in 2025-26, coming away with 14 wickets in 13 innings at an excellent economy rate of 6.23 in Sixers' run to the final. Davies isn't a big turner of the ball, but he pinned down batters with his subtle variations in pace, line and length. He leans on inputs from Sixers stalwart Steve O'Keefe, who claimed 99 BBL wickets at a sub-seven economy rate as well.
"I guess coming through early doors with the Sixers, I played a couple of games alongside Steve O'Keefe," Davies says. "We're very similar sort of bowlers, he's not a big spinner of the ball and neither am I. So it's those subtle changes to deceive the batter. And yeah, just ideally try to bowl lots of dot balls and then get the batter to play a shot that they're not planning on doing. Because we've built up a lot of pressure.
"I spoke to Steve O'Keefe even before I debuted in Bangladesh and he gave me a few little pointers which worked quite nicely for me. But yeah, to learn alongside him is unreal. Even with it being the back-end of his career, he still was obviously such a good player and so highly skilled and well regarded."
Davies is an attractive white-ball package. He is an electric fielder - he took three catches, including one off his own bowling - in the BBL Challenger in January - and can also contribute with the bat. Against Brisbane Heat, he carried Sixers to victory from 56 for 7 in a tense chase of 115 in Coffs Harbour. He sees that unbeaten 35 off 26 balls as a turning point in his development as an allrounder.
"I think it allowed me to have a lot of confidence in myself that I can finish games," Davies says. "Because I'm obviously not the biggest sort of guy on the field and I'm not hitting sixes to all parts of the ground. But if I can just sort of adapt and do the job that's required of me at that point in time, I can have a hopefully good career doing that. And that was a turning point for me to have a lot of confidence in my ability."
Prior to that knock, Davies had scored a half-century on Sheffield Shield debut for NSW against Queensland in December 2025. Davies is trusting his batting skills a lot more these days and is also hitting a lot more balls at the nets.
"In previous years I've had the mindset of sometimes less is more," Davies says. "I think I'd get enough done and sort of just go home and go to the beach or whatever. But I sort of made a conscious effort in the last year or two to really put my head down and start training a lot more. So I think just volume and I've been hitting more balls. And I guess working on shots that I'm not as comfortable playing."
At the Sixers camp in the BBL, Davies has had a front-row seat to how one of the greatest batters in the world prepares and he hopes to learn from him.
"Steve Smith has got 20 bats in the change room - all very good New Balance bats," Davies laughs. "He's sort of got his methods and a lot of that is training a lot. So he works very hard and I try to pick his brain a little bit to help me grow as a player. But yeah, a lot of it is just working hard and he loves hitting lots of balls. He's a perfectionist. So he will keep working until he gets it right. I think he tries to pass that down to other players as well."
Davies himself and his parents are especially excited at the prospect of the brothers playing together at Sixers in the next BBL. With Joel playing for Sixers and Ollie for Thunder in the previous season, the family's support was divided.
"I think Ollie will fit into the team nicely. And it's really nice for mum and dad to not have to be going to two games now," Davies says. "They can just come to the one and it's easy for them to choose who to support rather than us having to go against each other. Because I think mum really struggled to watch those games when I was bowling at Ollie. She didn't know what she wanted to happen. But now she can fully support the Sixers and want both of us to do really well.
"Myself and Ollie sort of got some inspiration from the Marsh brothers. Ollie's favourite player growing up was Shaun Marsh. So he was Shaun Marsh in the backyard and I was Mitch. Playing alongside my brother again will be a nice touch."