Davo comes full circle
John Rogers | March 06, 2023
“You bowl another bouncer Billy Rogers, and you won’t survive the day”.
The last three times I met up with Alan Davidson, his face would light up as he told me the day his family threatened to lynch my father.
It was 1945, the war just over, Davo a 15 year old talented cricketer playing 1st grade for Lisarow against my father’s 2nd club, Gosford. And Davo was showing his wares as a batter. He’d scored 40 and, already a strong kid, had hit a couple of sixes – the last off my father’s roundish-arm, quickish skidders. None-too-pleased, my father - then almost 40 years of age) bowled a bouncer, causing the kid to duck. From the boundary came a roar. Davo’s grandfather Paddy Clifton on the boundary made it very clear he was not happy. And when my father bowled another bouncer, a team Lisarow team roar and a part-field invasion followed. According to Davo, my father decided discretion was needed and did not bowl again!
Some 10 years later as I began playing, I became aware that Paddy Clifton was regarded as the best player ever in the local competition - and next best were his two sons Artie and Vern. A 3rd son was the team wicketkeeper Clem, and the daughter of the family and perhaps the tallest and strongest happened to marry into another a local cricket family, the Davidsons, and out of that union came Davo. He was steeped in the game. The Clifton family, like most around Lisarow-Ourimbah, worked in the bush as timber-getters, seeking out the hardwood, and especially the rare local red cedar trees, often camping out for days on end, so were all strong, leathery, self-sufficient types.
From the 1st World War on in 1919, the family’s Lisarow team dominated the local cricket comp – except for two years in the mid-1920s when my maternal grandfather George Skiller and my father (who 15 years later would marry George’s daughter) wrested the title from them. George was vice-captain and nearing 40 was a hard task-master and reluctantly had agreed with the captain to include the young 18 year old Billy Rogers in the competition final against Lisarow because his fielding was so good. The scorebook (which I still have) showed that Billy came in at no.8 when the team was in big trouble chasing 150, to join George. Young Artie Clifton had top-scored for Lisarow and already had 5 of the wickets with his leg-spinners. George had had a very poor season but this day he’d come good and commanded Billy not to play a shot and he would do the scoring. And it worked, Billy scoring just 18 as George ran up 80. In the process young Billy had been on the receiving end of Paddy Clifton’s none-to-gentle advice, and the intense rivalry from those days played a part in the bouncing of young Davo.
George loved telling me how to reach the venue 12 miles away at Narara when they had to be away at dawn in the horse and cart, and was none-too-pleased when Billy turned up in his own new-fangled car - one of the first in the district, which he’d extracted from his father as a condition to working the family farm.
In the late 1950s at the same time as Davo had become the spearhead to the Australian bowling attack, I began playing 1st grade cricket and quickly came up against Davo’s uncles Artie and Vern Clifton, both then nearing 50 but still playing occasionally. Artie was not tall but immensely skilful and his leg-spinners turned a right angles. Vern was much bigger physically, also a leg-spinner and a hard-hitting batsman. My own hopeful career as a leg spinner ended abruptly at Saratoga Oval one day when the second of Vern’s sixes off my bowling was hit straight over my head and 20 metres out into the part of Broken Bay known as the Broadwater, never to be seen again.
My first three years in Sydney grade were Davo’s last but not once did I get to play against him at his fabled Pratten Park where the Bowling Club behind the sightscreen at the Northern end would adjourn Saturday afternoon bowls whenever Davo came out to bat. His sixes bouncing on the bowling green were physically dangerous and worse for the heart!
While a non-smoker and a light drinker, Davo loved socialising and meeting people. For 6 years he had for him a dream job, chairing the Rothmans National Sport Foundation as the tobacco companies took advantage of poorly-paid sports people to shell out money to any sport sensible enough to come up with a coaching program. In return Davo would receive lunch and dinner invitations by the bucket-load and rarely did he decline. At the same time he began a 33 year term as president of Cricket NSW and a 20 year term on the SCG Trust. Rothmans gave him a plush office on the 6th floor of an office building near the Opera House and he would attend every function. By the time I left Sydney for Perth in 1980 I would have heard at least 100 speeches from Davo. But such an engaging enthusiast was he, that even on the umpteenth hearing, it was very difficult not to smile and laugh at a Davo anecdote.
In the telling of his stories, rarely would Davo say a bad word about anyone. But one day I when in Perth as a national selector, he exploded.
I was telling him about organisational problems as WACA General Manager I had had with the Pakistan touring team in the previous season and in particular with its manager, Ijaz Butt. I had not known that Ijaz Butt had been a wicket-keeper and opening batsman for Pakistan in the three tests Davo played there in 1959/60.
Davo rarely swore and I was astonished when he let fly with an expletive-laden rant. It began with “Ijaz bloody Butt! That miserable so-and so”! And on went Davo for about 5 minutes about how Ijaz’s antics behind the stumps and in front of them in what seemed a war against an invading enemy had so offended the tourists. It finished with Davo telling of a vow he had made: “If ever I played against Ijaz in Australian I would do my best to knock his block off!”
Full circle it seems Davo had come since Billy Rogers’ near lynching some 40 years earlier.
