“His dream is to play for the Proteas and playing in South Africa is very important to him.” – Weber van Wyk, Dewald Brevis’ agent.
Telford Vice | Cape Town
IF you’re a cricketminded South African, Dewald Brevis should scare you. Not because of his potential, nor the comparisons with his hero, AB de Villiers, nor the fact that the teenager is a household name in households far from his country. The worry is that he has no use for South African cricket.
Brevis’ Mumbai Indians salary is, per week, almost five times as much as Graeme Smith was paid by CSA to be their director of cricket. Smith was appointed on the strength of the relationships he built while playing 117 Tests, 197 ODIs and 33 T20Is in an international career that endured for almost 12 years. Brevis has yet to play a single first-class or list A match, much less a game for South Africa’s senior team. Why should he bother when, with his 19th birthday looming on Friday, he is paid exponentially more than Smith, and 16 times the average annual South African salary for nine weeks’ work?
Weber van Wyk, Brevis’ agent, begged to differ. “He’s come through a system in which South African cricket has given him many opportunities to prepare him for hopefully a long career in franchise and international cricket,” Van Wyk told Cricbuzz. “His journey may be different to other players’, but I wouldn’t say he doesn’t need South African cricket. It’s quite the opposite. His dream is to play for the Proteas and playing in South Africa is very important to him.”
Those are emotional and sentimental reasons for staying true to the game in South Africa, and they are admirable. But De Villiers expressed much the same feelings for years, and when push came to shove in terms of his workload he chose the franchise circuit and retired from international cricket at 34. What happens if Brevis faces a similar choice? “Dewald’s career is just starting and he is just focusing on what is ahead of him month to month and just thankful for opportunities he is getting,” Van Wyk said.
Fair enough. Who can say what decision Brevis might make once he is an established player and adult? But it won’t reassure those who were alarmed by what they considered De Villiers’ defection that Brevis going the same way cannot be ruled out. Their concern will grow every time he delivers an impressive performance at the IPL, of which there have already been several.
Having sat out Mumbai’s first two matches, Brevis made his debut against Kolkata Knight Riders on April 6 in Pune, where the crowd of 21,000 would have held an exponentially bigger than he had yet seen as a player. He seemed unfussed by that, hitting 29 off the 19 balls he faced from Umesh Yadav, Rasikh Salam, Pat Cummins, Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy.
Three days later and still in Pune, Brevis’ first delivery in the IPL bagged the wicket, by hook, crook or DRS, of Virat Kohli. Four days after that, at the same venue, he hammered a 25-ball 49 against Punjab Kings. Rahul Chahar’s first over for Punjab, in which Brevis hit a four followed by four consecutive sixes, went for 29 runs: the leg spinner’s most expensive of the 170 overs he had bowled in the IPL.
Three days on at the beautiful Brabourne in Mumbai, Brevis put the first ball he faced — from Lucknow Super Giants’ Avesh Khan — through point for four with an apexed elbow and a painter’s flourish. He hit 31 off 13, which were bowled to him by Avesh, Ravi Bishnoi and Dushmantha Chameera.
Brevis has since had two quiet games, getting out for four and three playing early attacking shots against Chennai Super Kings and Lucknow. But he has made his mark, and in high places. “Brevis = Player” Ben Stokes tweeted during his 13-ball 31. After Brevis was dismissed, Stokes popped up with, “Sorry Brevis”. But it’s who else takes notice that matters.
That’s because there are more players like Brevis where he comes from: honed in the country’s elite schools, brought to the attention of franchise team owners by precocious performances at junior level, and who could be whisked away to the IPL and the like without delay. A senior international career isn’t part of that equation. It’s at best irrelevant, at worst a hindrance.
Did Van Wyk foresee some who have grown up in the game in South Africa choosing to bypass senior cricket in their country in favour of a career abroad? “I can’t answer that. That’s up to the player, and it differs from player to player.” It’s a reasonable response to the question. And it will worry many South Africans, who see the textbook example in Brevis himself.
He is a product of Afrikaanse Hoër Seunskool in Pretoria, which has also given cricket De Villiers, Faf du Plessis, Jacques Rudolph, Heino Kuhn, Neil Wagner and Kruger van Wyk. Currently, 18 CSA-accredited coaches are on the school’s books. Three of them hold a level three certificate. That makes them as or more qualified than a host of prominent coaches, some of whom have been in charge of senior international teams. Schools in this league draw the best young talent, and offer bursaries to those who can’t afford their steep fees.
Thus moulded for a fine future, Brevis duly fired at this year’s under-19 World Cup, in the Caribbean in January and February. He scored two centuries and three half-centuries, two of them in the 90s. His aggregate of 506 in six innings is a record for the tournament, beating the 505 Shikhar Dhawan piled up in seven trips to the crease in 2004.
Brevis’ timing was perfect. The IPL auction started nine days after the last of his World Cup innings, a 130-ball 138 against Bangladesh, and Mumbai spent USD393,554 to secure his services. That’s as much as the Gujarat Titans paid for David Miller, and more than was fetched by 133 other players — among them Aiden Markram, Jason Roy, Mustafizur Rahman, Tim Southee, Tymal Mills, Devon Conway, Rassie van der Dussen, Dwaine Pretorius, Kyle Mayers and Lungi Ngidi. Of the 204 players who were bought, only 58 were more expensive than Brevis. Another 396 went unsold. They included Shakib al Hasan, Steve Smith and Suresh Raina.
Cricket has changed vastly since Brevis was born 37 days after Australia beat India in the 2003 World Cup final at the Wanderers, just more than a year after Smith made his Test debut, and 18 months ahead of De Villiers playing the first of his 420 matches for South Africa.
An illustration of how much has morphed into what many of us may not recognise as part of cricket is that Brevis has been made the subject of a non-fungible token (NFT), a unique digital memento that cannot be copied, and which often features a video clip — in Brevis’ case of him launching England’s Tom Prest over long-on for six during the under-19 World Cup quarter-final in Antigua. The ownership of NFTs is protected by blockchain technology, and their value can rise and fall like that of other collectables. Brevis’ NFT was sold 16 times from March 9 to April 19 for between USD200 and USD444. Stokes’ NFT has gone for more than Brevis’ three times, with a top sale of USD500. But Kagiso Rabada’s has yet to fetch more than USD37. Not even the South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA) knew about this. On being informed, SACA set about looking into what happened to Brevis’ image rights fees.
Maybe he doesn’t need that money, either. Just like he doesn’t need a Proteas cap. He and his agent have said he wants to play for South Africa, but who knows what a few more IPL paydays will do to that dream? Having made it to the big time without the help of international cricket, his loyalty surely must be to the IPL. If there is a choice to be made, why should Brevis pick a team he has never played for? Or didn’t play for before he reached the most high profile stage in the game?
De Villiers played 118 matches for South Africa before he made his IPL debut, but the travelling T20 circuses claimed him in the end. Last month, Rabada, Marco Jansen, Anrich Nortjé, Ngidi, Van der Dussen and Aiden Markram went the same way, albeit temporarily, when they picked the IPL over the Test series against Bangladesh.
As explained above, Brevis is different. How different? We don’t yet know. That’s really what’s scary.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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