Michael Hill agrees to ‘long-term’ deal at Essendon

It shaped as one of the big transfers of the Premier Cricket off-season but Michael Hill has turned down an approach from Melbourne and is staying at Essendon.

Michael Hill cuts hard against Dandenong last season.

NO.

It’s a simple word, but Michael Hill had difficulty saying it to Melbourne when his former Premier club came calling last month.

The Demons were eager to regain the left-hander from Essendon as they took stock after a disappointing season. It followed a similarly thin 2017-18.

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Hill regards Melbourne as “home’’ — he went there from Subbies club Ivanhoe at the age of 16 — and saw the romance attached to a return.

But in the end he said that simple word, no. He decided to stay at Essendon, whom he joined three years ago, the former Victorian and Tasmanian batsman agreeing to a “long-term’’ deal with the Bombers.

“I’ve found a really good bunch of people at Essendon Cricket Club,’’ Hill, 30, said.

“They’ve taken me in and I feel like it’s as my much home as anywhere. Some of my greatest friends in cricket are from the club.

“I had the most difficult 18 months of my life in my first couple of years at Essendon. They put up with that and they helped me through it, from Brendan Joyce in my first year when I lost my father. They were just amazing. And there’s never been pressure as such to score huge numbers of runs. If you have a couple of bad games there’s never people behind the glass in the clubrooms looking at you and saying, ‘Come on, pull the finger out’. They have faith in you.

“I had discussions with Adam Dale (Melbourne coach) a few times, about my intentions. Also with Andrew Kent (Demons great). It was a definite consideration, I’m not going to lie.

“It wasn’t a tough decision to stay (at Essendon). But it was a tough decision to let a very good friend of mine in Adam Dale know that I wouldn’t be returning.’’

Michael Hill made 738 runs at 61.5 last season.

An exceptional under-age cricketer — he made his Subbies debut at the age of 14 and captained Australia in the Under 19 World Cup in 2008 — Hill played in two premierships with the Demons and rose to the Victorian Shield team in 2009-10.

The following season he crafted a century against the visiting English team, 105 not out as an opener.

Unable to make a Victorian position his own, he moved to Tasmania in 2014-15.

In his only first-class match for Tassie he bagged a pair against the Vics in Alice Springs. Hill hasn’t played Shield cricket since and nor does he expect to in the future, despite being at an age that puts him far from over the hill, so to speak.

Hill did do some Big Bashing with the Hurricanes but all his batsmanship now will be done at Premier level “and I want to make as many runs as I can’’.

Last season he made 738 at 61.5, with two centuries, nudging out prolific pair Aaron Ayre and James Seymour for the batting award and going past 5500 runs in Premier Cricket.

A player of his ability should be fixing his focus on 10,000.

Hill experienced the “really special feeling’’ of premiership success at Melbourne. Essendon’s last flag was in 1969-70. The Dons put themselves in a strong position to challenge for last season’s title but lost to Geelong in the qualifying final at Windy Hill, a run chase going crooked.

It put them up against Carlton in the preliminary final, not the grand final that a lot of observers had been expecting.

“We made a blue against Geelong … and we had only ourselves to blame,’’ he said.

“Beautiful conditions, we kept them to a reasonable enough target but didn’t execute with the bat like we had throughout the whole season. We were chasing down totals of 400-plus almost every week. Unfortunately it came unstuck in that game.’’

* Carlton has locked in captain Evan Gulbis as its new coach, replacing Warren Ayres, who stood down after the Blues’ premiership.